Affordable, reliable network backup solutions?
We're a small graphic and web design company.
Small as in two designers, one front office person.
We need a solution to back up our work on a central server - preferrably something that happens automatically either real-time (yeah right) or some sort of daily chron job.
We need a decent amount of space, probably up to 100GB (we'll need room to grow).
And we would like it the backup, backed up to an additional drive.
Preferrably something that is resonably priced, of course.
Any recommendations?
Small as in two designers, one front office person.
We need a solution to back up our work on a central server - preferrably something that happens automatically either real-time (yeah right) or some sort of daily chron job.
We need a decent amount of space, probably up to 100GB (we'll need room to grow).
And we would like it the backup, backed up to an additional drive.
Preferrably something that is resonably priced, of course.
Any recommendations?
Comments
3 Seagate Barracude IV 80GB drives: $97 each
2 OWC Elite Pro FireWire enclosures: $95 each
1 Acard ATA/133 PCI card: $80
The PCI card and one 80GB are the main drive.
Each of the FireWire drives was given an 80GB as well.
One stays hooked up to the server, and rsync'd every couple of hours in the background (multiple backup levels to boot, using hardlinks - very slick trick).
The other I keep at my office, but bring home on the weekends for weekly mirroring. Not perfect off-site backup, but good enough for my needs right now.
cool
sounds decent.
i thought a Blue & White G3 would work well to put all this junk in . . .yes?
I might add in a tape on top of it - depending on how much 'coverage' my bosses want.
<strong>
One stays hooked up to the server, and rsync'd every couple of hours in the background (multiple backup levels to boot, using hardlinks - very slick trick).
</strong><hr></blockquote>
What does this bit mean?
Could you please elaborate?
Is this the rsync you are referring to?
<a href="http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/"; target="_blank">http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/</a>;
Do you run it as a cron job from a shell script?
Care to share details?
I have been looking for something like this too, but my questions are more on the software side than on the hardware side.
Thanks,
AIO
[ 08-07-2002: Message edited by: AllInOne ]</p>
Some people prefer 'psync', a Perl module. I've never used it, but it seems to be the tool of choice on various MacOS X dev lists. I suppose I should ask why, eh?
Hardlinks are a Unix variant on aliases that are indistinguishable from the actual files in almost every respect. They aren't an alias to the file, they *are* the file... they just don't take up any noticeable room. It is possible to set up a backup system that *looks* like several multiple copies of the entire data tree, but is actually only one copy, with extra copies of changed files only. It's all explained rather nicely <a href="http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/"; target="_blank">here.</a>
And yes, this can all be run from a cron job.