Cloning backups to removable disk.

[mschlott]

I have a requirement to get my backups moved to removable media so that if anything happens to my Veeam target file system, I still have an option to recover data. Today I am using Veeam 5 to run daily incremental backups, with synthetic full backups running on Thursday through Monday. I also transform previous backups into a full. This way I can write my veeam backups to tape on tuesday and wednesday without risk of not getting a good copy of my vrb or vbk files.

What I would like to do, is get away from writing to tape and start doing weekly copies of my veeam backups to removable disk. Is any one else doing this? If so, what are you doing.

I envision some sort of JBOD that does not require a carrier for the drive that I could hot plug 10 or so SATA drives into. I would have 3 scripts to manage the disks. One to format and mount the drives, another to copy the data, and a third to unmount the drives for offsite storage.

Am I reinventing the wheel here? Someone else has to be doing this. If so, what are you using for hardware?

mike

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Mike, kindly please search the forum for the existing discussions on removable media and cloning backup files procedures:
http://forums.veeam.com/search.php?st=p ... copy+rsync

[mschlott]

Thanks for the quick link. All of the posts that I have come across deal with copying to a remote site as well as the local site. I already copy to a remote site. I keep no local copies. I'd like to copy to a removable drive. From a scripting standpoint, I think I have that covered.

What I really need is hardware. What I would like to have is what I have on tape. The confidence that no matter what happens, on a tape somewhere, I have my data. I keep 21 days of Veeam backups in Veeam. I keep all files for each backup job in their own directory and none of those directories exceed 2TB. My idea would be to on a weekly basis back up each directory to a removable 2TB drive and send that drive off site for 90 days. By doing this, I have the ability to bring back a single drive and restore directly from it.

If I can find reasonably priced hardware that allows me to keep 5 to 10 drives on line and not require carriers, I can easily pull drives and move them off site. The drives I would need for this would cost under $7000. If I have to use typical jbods, I would have to buy a carrier and possibly an adapter for each drive, which can drive the cost up. If I had to remount the drives in the carrier each week, that would be to labor intensive and make the whole idea unfeasible.

I guess this is not a Veeam question as much as a hardware question. Does anyone off site a physical drive?

[dellock6]

Hi Mike,
for what you are looking for, have a look at Imation RDX, they are also reselled by Dell under the name RD. There also an autoloader with multiple disks in their catalog, I never used it but I used in the past the single drive cartridge.
I always designed systems with replicas in place over-the-wire, not by shipping any physical drive. Your solution involves too much human effort and so is prone (IMHO) to much more errors in every step that it needs to be taken. You wrote you already have in place a remote replica, so why do you need also a remote disk?

Luca.