Backup schedule

Lynne Desrochers · September 24, 2014, 07:19:30 PM

Does anyone care to share their current backup schedule? Rotations and things. I use to have tape and take a tape off site every night. Now I have online backup and to an external hard drive but I'm wondering about the rotation I should be using.
Thank you for sharing.

Mark · September 24, 2014, 07:50:31 PM

My opinion with that kind of setup is just how many days do you want available before you have to pull from online. Probably also depends on how your online storage is setup. If I was restoring one file or a small number of files, I'd probably pull from online regardless because that's easiest. If I was restoring the whole tam folder for example, I'd prefer to pull from something faster like the external drive.

For tape, I use a 25 tape rotation that uses alternating Monday through Thursday tapes, and individual Friday and monthly tapes. Gives me multiple points in time to select from.

Lynne Desrochers · September 24, 2014, 11:52:42 PM

Quote from: Mark on September 24, 2014, 07:50:31 PM
For tape, I use a 25 tape rotation that uses alternating Monday through Thursday tapes, and individual Friday and monthly tapes. Gives me multiple points in time to select from.

Ok, so for tape you used 25 (we did as well), I don't have 25 external drives, so I was wondering what others were doing.

Mark · September 25, 2014, 08:34:27 AM

Right. I always assumed it was how the backup sets were managed with the online service. I am curious if what I said above is what others are doing, or if there is some kind of standard set somewhere (similar to the 25 tape rotation).

Jeff Zylstra · September 25, 2014, 10:11:41 AM

We do something very similar to what Mark does, only with USB hard drives. We have an IOMega "fireproof" hard drive that connects via an eSATA connection, and then the backup software copies that night's backup file to the 4 daily drives and 5 "Friday" drives. The Friday drives are much larger, and can hold 3 or more backups on them, so we have a greater chance of retrieving old file copies if we need to. That has saved me once or twice.

Lynne Desrochers · September 25, 2014, 10:26:13 AM

So you have nine of these IOMega hard drives and rotate them daily?
Thanks.

Charlie Charbonneau · September 25, 2014, 11:16:37 AM

I have a grouping of Apricorn hardware encrypted USB 3.0 Drives that rotate out of the office.

but my goto for file restore is shadow copy. I <3 Shadow Copy!

Lynne Desrochers · September 25, 2014, 11:20:45 AM

How many? How often do they go offsite? Thanks.

Jeff Zylstra · September 25, 2014, 11:22:36 AM

Quote from: Lynne Desrochers on September 25, 2014, 10:26:13 AM
So you have nine of these IOMega hard drives and rotate them daily?
Thanks.

No, we have 1 IOmega drive. I think it's 3 Terrabytes or something like that, and holds like 20 daily backups. Then we have 4 Monday-Thursday USB plug in drives that are like 250Gigabytes and hold 1 backup, since are backups are now 130 Gigs. Then I have five, 1 and/or 2 Terrabyte USB drives for the 5 possible Fridays in a month. These larger USB drives are the ones that hold more backups.

We unplug the USB drives the morning after the backup and take the newest USB backup drive home every night.

If you're going with USB drives, I would recommend that you use Seagate USB hard drives. They seem to be the most compatible drives. I have some Toshiba USB hard drives that are finnicky and don't always allow the drives to be "locked" by the backup software which is mandatory for backups to work properly.

Charlie Charbonneau · September 25, 2014, 11:31:16 AM

I currently only have 3 drives, but will be adding more. I rotate daily. 1 at home, 1 travels to work with me and 1 at work.

For those that aren't using hardware encryption, are you using software encryption on your backup drives? Or no encryption? If no encryption, is this not an E&O exposure? Lost/stolen drives in transit?

The Apricorn drives work great with backup. The only downside is I can't do a remote reboot in the evenings or the drive will lock and backup will fail.

Mark · September 25, 2014, 11:34:39 AM

Quote from: Charlie Charbonneau on September 25, 2014, 11:31:16 AM
I currently only have 3 drives, but will be adding more. I rotate daily. 1 at home, 1 travels to work with me and 1 at work.

For those that aren't using hardware encryption, are you using software encryption on your backup drives? Or no encryption? If no encryption, is this not an E&O exposure? Lost/stolen drives in transit?

The Apricorn drives work great with backup. The only downside is I can't do a remote reboot in the evenings or the drive will lock and backup will fail.

No encryption is not only an E&O exposure, but likely a HIPAA violation as well.

Charlie Charbonneau · September 25, 2014, 11:36:28 AM

Well that was my thought, but no one was mentioning it!!!

Jeff Zylstra · September 25, 2014, 11:45:44 AM

Quote from: Charlie Charbonneau on September 25, 2014, 11:31:16 AM
I currently only have 3 drives, but will be adding more. I rotate daily. 1 at home, 1 travels to work with me and 1 at work.

For those that aren't using hardware encryption, are you using software encryption on your backup drives? Or no encryption? If no encryption, is this not an E&O exposure? Lost/stolen drives in transit?

The Apricorn drives work great with backup. The only downside is I can't do a remote reboot in the evenings or the drive will lock and backup will fail.

I use Acronis Backup software, and DO use the encryption feature in it. Supposedly, you can also boot from the USB backup drive so that all you need is the USB backup drive and it will restore Windows as well as the data.

Jeff Golas · September 25, 2014, 11:51:22 AM

Surprised nobody mentioned shadowcopy - if you haven't used it - you should! It enables you to go back to a version of a file in recent time (depends on how much space you dedicate to it) - I can honestly say I can count the number of files I actually restore from tape on one hand, almost 2 fingers...thanks to shadowcopy.

Lynne Desrochers · September 25, 2014, 12:05:43 PM

Quote from: Charlie Charbonneau on September 25, 2014, 11:36:28 AM
Well that was my thought, but no one was mentioning it!!!

Mention it all! Whatever you are thinking. When I switched to my latest server my tape drive was gone, so I have other stuff going on, but I am curious to what others are doing, since I used to have the M- Th weeks 1 & 2, Fridays and month end. Now for some reason with the hard drive, I don't have that many and it makes a girl ask why?
Encryption yes, that too is being done. These silly things are too easily lost.
Thank you all for your input.