Offsite hard disk strategy - thoughts

[Moopere]

Hello Community,

Looking for ideas based on what folks are actually doing at their sites.

My sites that have larger data backup requirements are using LTO tapes. This is great and works as expected. Easy to manage and take the backups off site. DR downside is having to read a full tape back to disk before restore can begin, but its manageable and LTO tape is relatively fast.

Smaller sites are using consumer USB disks plugged into servers to gain their daily offsite backup copys. Most servers in the fleets I manage are USB 2. So, up to about 1TB backup copies are sort of fine though it takes from early evening until midday the next day to push that amount of data through a USB 2 interface. Once we get above 1TB up to about 2TB the backup copy starts leaking into the next 24 hour period and easy-to-manage-by-office-staff daily-offsite capability basically ends.

I've never really like using usb disks anyway tbh, they tend to fail, are fragile, awfully slow and aren't easy to manage (or place) in a racked server environment - they are cheap though, so its been a sort of safety in numbers type deal. Hopefully they don't all fail when you need them (LOL).

What are folks using? RDX would seem the logical solution but they are laughably expensive ... really ... I can't believe anyone would use this solution over LTO tape. LTO is fine, as stated above, I'm using it and will continue to do so, but the smaller shops balk at the capital cost of entering the LTO game. I could stuff a disk caddy into a 1U case, but this would mean I'm moving around standard internal drives and they don't enjoy being moved on a daily basis - an invitation to failure there I'm sure.

I'm in Australia so cloud solutions are pretty much out at the SMB level - internet here is ridiculously slow for the type of service SMB's have and can afford.

Thoughts?

[Mildur]

Hi Moopere

So, up to about 1TB backup copies are sort of fine though it takes from early evening until midday the next day to push that amount of data through a USB 2 interface. Once we get above 1TB up to about 2TB the backup copy starts leaking into the next 24 hour period and easy-to-manage-by-office-staff daily-offsite capability basically ends.

What is the bottleneck shown in the backup copy session?
I wouldn't be worried about the speed to copy a backup to the USB drive. I would think of the restore time. It will also take a really long time to restore this 2 TB. And using Instant Recovery from an USB Disk can work, but I don't expect good performance for the servers.
If it must be USB, then I suggest at least USB 3 and not USB 2.

If cloud storage is no option, then I would stay with LTO Tapes. They are more stable as USB disks, in case you also want them to archive data for a longer time. Are they connected over SAS?

Thanks
Fabian

[Moopere]

> What is the bottleneck shown in the backup copy session?

Its the destination .. the usb drive. They vary a little bit depending on the drive, but USB2 is all 20-30MB/S


> I wouldn't be worried about the speed to copy a backup to the USB drive. I would think of the restore time. It will also take a really long time to restore this 2 TB.
> And using Instant Recovery from an USB Disk can work, but I don't expect good performance for the servers.

I've done DR testing and the IR from USB does work. Its not great but it gets the site up within just a few minutes. LTO can't do this as a full tape restore to disk is going to take at least 3-4 hours or more.


> If it must be USB, then I suggest at least USB 3 and not USB 2.

Sure, there is about a power of magnitude difference in real world speed, however, most of the server fleets I deal with are racked and front USB ports are what they are .. almost always USB2. Adding USB3 cards could concievably work but would present the port at the rear of the rack and require some funky cabling to bring it to the front ... and there is still the problem of where the USB disk should live.

Its the purpose of my post really - these common cheap consumer USB disks are not really a good solution once you move past a tiny sized business with _very_ modest data requirements.


> If cloud storage is no option, then I would stay with LTO Tapes. They are more stable as USB disks, in case you also want them to archive data for a longer time. Are they connected over SAS?

All my customer LTO's are SAS. I think USB versions exist but I've never seen one. They're fast, reliable and the media is really cheap/TB - but the cost to entry is high, AUD$4-5-6,000 per stand alone drive and then you still need to buy 10 or 20 media or so to get started - it adds up. Businesses moving from truly small to medium balk. They ultimately do it, but its always a thing.

Really wondering what others use? I know for most folks tape has long fallen out of favour, everyone can't be using USB disks or Cloud solutions surely?