what is YOUR definition of reliable storage?

hey guys, just looking to get all the oppinions of what you guys would call 'reliable' storage. By that I mean, at which point would you say a server, or series of servers is reliable enough that you would be able to tell a client with resonable certainty (say in a personal backup situation) that their data isn't going to dissapear.

I dont really want to bring in things like uptime, simply the setup that you'd use to say the DATA is secure. For example:

I'd say the minimum before you can call data is secure is, atleast 1 level of mirroring per server, and all data is duplicated across multiple servers (not my actual oppinion).

Hoping to break this down in to a number of possibilities, which I'll make in to a poll.

I'd give my oppinion but Im afraid of the fire.

oh, and maybe give your oppinion if you had to store the data on a single sight (not unreasonable in situations where the volume of data is so high that the bandwidth to send inter-sight would be unreasonable)

 

Depends on how valuable the info is?...

I'd have very definitions if I was comparing my own downloaded content (low value) to my lifetime of photos (high personal value) to the project drive at work (enormous monetary value).

If the business just needs to not lose the information, then a simple RAID'd server with nightly backups to tape (in a fireproof safe) may be enough.

If uptime is important - duplicated servers on-site. Individual HW failure becomes less important if an entire machine is duplicated.

 

Addendum: After typing all of this out it sounds like I'm quite paranoid. It's true.

Our client data - paid photoshoots, weddings, websites, other media - is stored on the home/office server which has 6-drive raidz2 ararys - 2 drives redundant in every 6 - as well as being spread out over at least 3 HBAs so that if one dies the array is still functioning. Any current (last month or likely to be called upon in that given week) data is duplicated onto another array of smaller drives to save us going to an offsite backup in a hurry. Everything is behind UPS' with ECC-enabled network cards where possible.

Everything (business stuff, personal photos, music, DVDs, blurays) are backed up offsite with a large number of 2TB drives. The most important stuff is backed up in two locations.

Everything is zfs with weekly scrubbing - we lost a handful of drives at once about 18 months ago and some of the backups had partially corrupted somewhere along the way and while nothing was actually lost we made the move over to something which had easy-to-manage automated scrubbing of everything regularly.

...Back to your question... as a bare minimum for reliable storage to me: If it's not in at least two locations - physically as well as logically - then it's as good as gone in the case of a fire, theft, hardware fault, power surge, etc. etc... too many potential losses there. I don't think redundancy is all that relevant for most people if it's not mission critical and you can wait for a backup... but for a business where downtime costs money it's a different story.

 

is tape still cost effective?

 

3-2-1 rule?

3 backups, 2 media types, 1 off-site.

Personally my important data is stored locally & on a network storage device and replicated off-site. But I also have much less important data that I just protect with RAID, so as others have suggested, it depends on how important the data is, and it's also worth considering how long it takes to restore/downtime (for business use).

 

My important data is stored on 1xseperately stored USB stick, 1x seperately stored external HDD and 1xinternal HDD. Safe enough for my needs I think

My less important data is just main copy on internal HDD, backup copy on external HDD (in different location, NAS)

 

if you can afford the initial upfront costs then yes, i believe it is. being able to back up 1.5-3tb worth of data for $60 a tape, with a lifespan of around 20 year if stored properly is simply unbeatable.

 

I would add....

Backup is only as reliable as the restore process as well.

Ie unless you TEST the backup can be restored every now and then.... It's pretty much useless.

So now all the paranoid people.... Run out and test your backups can ACTUALLY be restored from.....

.

 

word.

I recall a top 50 company that failed to do this...and paid the price. so it's not just home users and small bus. that forget this rule.

off to run a few backups....

 

i did a backup once...

 

how do you guys use your offsite storage? do you send data to it on some form of WAN trunk (leaves your network somewhere in transit), wouldn't it be easier just to use a net based service like backBlaze or live drive (whatever it is called), and be able to lean on their garuntees?

Only way I'd be able to see offsite storage that uses drives that I own and maintain myself as viable would be

a.1) I didn't have to pay for traffic from site 1 to site 2 (and it didnt negatively effect the service I provided)

a.2) I had a method of transporting the data from site 1 to site 2 without the use of traffic (ie. the secutary kept a backup at her place)

b) I didn't 'trust' other backup services to be secure with the data I was passing over to it, and encryption wasn't viable (too slow or too weak).

Outside of that, I might as well use the traffic I had to use anyway to send it somewhere, sending it to an external service that charge as little as $5 a month for as much as unlimited data.

 

I am pretty happy with my setup at home.

raidz2 on the main server and raidz on the backup(would like raidz2 here too!) and the key ~3TB or so rotated offsite backups to a mate and to crashplan (cloud).

the real key for me is monitoring and integrity testing. I run regular scrubs and have nagios monitoring a load of systems events and alerting me immediately via push notifications. I also test restores to confirm thedata isavailable and integral.

once scripted it takes bugger all time and I sleep well knowing my digital investment is secure.

 

OP it really depends on what data you're trying to backup here...

First of all. You need a backup. You can't call RAID 1 build on a sever a backup. RAID is mostly used for creating extra redundancy against hard disk failure, which is what you want to suggest to your client to grantee more server uptime. You can't discount accidental deletion or data corruption which is what you always need a backup for.
Tape is cost effective once you get past the initial costs of tape drives, which will last you quite some years, you don't have to keep upgrading to the latest LTO standard unless your data is really growing rapidly. Tape allows you to store many copies of that data in a cost effective manner.
Cloud based backup is an option, especially if the customer is a bit lazy doing consistent tape rotations. The question is do you have enough network bandwidth to upload your backups fast enough? How much data are you backing up?

 

I've setup with Crashplan and been very happy with them. I've also been suggesting that family members sign up also if they've got important enough data - the nice thing with it is it's "set and forgot". The less technically savvy are much better off if they don't need to do anything.

I'm backing up about 300GB myself - took ages for the first upload (on ADSL1 ), but now that it's all up there, it does continuous incrementals.

 

Crash Plan is something I would suggest for home users too, but I wouldn't be introducing it to a business. Depending on the size of business and how quickly they think they will grow will all depend if they can settle for as something basic as crash plan. Even Crash Plan's "pro" stuff is very limited to basic Windows, Linux and Mac files system backups. If you need any sort of advanced backup features then it's pretty limiting.

 

I am paranoid. There is no such thing as reliable storage.

 

Absolutely agree. For enterprise, no, but I would assume that someone who is tasked with completing enterprise-level data management wouldn't be asking in a post on OCAU...

For most small businesses, I think Crashplan would do fine. Mostly they just have some documents and possibly MYOB/Quickbooks files which are really important to them.

There are similar products which use Amazon or Rackspace cloud storage, but the reason I went with them personally is the price - I've paid about $USD125 for 4 years unlimited.

It's still useful to use physical backups though, because downloading gigs/terabytes of data over the internet to do a restore would not be a trivial exercise!

 

Agreed. However you can protect your data to a big extent. I think someone here already mentioned the 3,2,1 approach. 3 backups on two diffrent media with at least one stored offsite. Also it pays to have your business continuity plan reviewed every 6-12 months as your business needs grow and change.

 

3 copies
2 different medium
1 offsite

 

I've been using crashplan pro as a supplement to tape backups. Taken a while to upload all the data but now its up there, theres easily enough time to do a backup overnight. to be used as a last resort if all else fails...