What backup Solution do you think is the best (NOT SOHO) for SMB/Enterprise?

ebarrouk, I don't quite agree with your cons for hard drives ;-)

If you use a good NAS_solutions which has a gigabit connection to it you can back up 500GB relatively fast. (in a few hours). Assuming that your server has a gigabite and a raid as well ofcource ;)

Tapes aren't necesarrely cheap. If you have to have for every server a tape-recorder + tapes you'll find that NAS might be even cheaper...

Greetz.

Michael

Wow - first of all thanks for all comments - KEEP EM COMING! :-)

I agree with Michael on that -  i have heard some really good things about Network Appliance "NetApp iSCSI-based IP SAN"
http://www.netapp.com/products/ipsan.html

With a fast network and a good disk solution tape's will become obsolete - well that's at least what I'm hoping to have, but i think it very interesting to hear your views about tapes too! :-)

Anyways, I will try to keep quiet in in this post and humbly listen and learn from you guys! :-)

You need to consider how much data you back-up too, and how.  based on 5 incrementals and a full per week, with an average of 20% daily change, your back-up are twice as big as your data...per week.
Throw in a 5 week cycle, plus a monthly full to keep for a year, and a yearly full to keep for 7 years, and suddenly your back-up quantity is 28 times larger than the data size.  you then need to factor growth on top of that.  Thus, to back-up 500GB to disk, you'd need to install 14TB.

Another limitation of disk is that it's powered.  That means it's vulnerable to EMP.  It's also potentially vulnerable to corruption/virus infection.  A tape which isn't inserted in a tape library is unlikely to alter its contents.

Being an enterprise level organisation, you need to consider off-siting of your back-up data in case the entire datacentre blows up/catches fire/whatever.  you can't easily eject a RAID disk so you need to install your backup disks in a separate site with lots of bandwidth.  ideally, you'd have two copies (otherwise total loss of the back-up site means you just lost all your back-up data....if you need to restore to last night to get rid of a corruption/data input issue you're in trouble.) so now you're upto 56times the data volume, and you need replication software and a lot of bandwidth.

Disk works well when you're talking to the cache - once you fill/empty that (depending on operation) and are relying on underlying disk speed, the throughput generally drops dramatically.  High end SANs counter that by enormous cache sizes (48GB and more isn't uncommon) and intelligent pre-emptive algorithms to pre-populate the cache.  

I briefly looked at their (netapp) stuff a few years ago to fix a file server issue and was blown away by thier claims of upto 80MB/s throughput (I was getting 6-9 from my file server).  after digging further, the figure quoted was accessing data from cache.  accessing small files direct from disk (as per a back-up of file server) was down around 9MB/s.  Using the device as the back-up destination is different of course, since back-up software writes large files in a sequential manner.

The netapp device you indicate is IP based.  IP is currently limited to 1Gbps - add your overhead for IP packaging and you're looking at about 70MB/s max throughput.  Fibre channel is currrently at 4Gbps and doesn't have the same overheads that IP does.  An LTO3 drive does 70MB/s natively - double that with compression if you can feed it fast enough.  Remember to factor in enough NIC's to achieve the overall throughput you need.

Thanks for nice the comment Disorganise!

So Disorganise...... What backup Solution do you think is the best (NOT SOHO) for SMB/Enterprise??

Well...I have a substancial investment in NBU.  I also have a little over 20TB SATA disk doing absolutely nothing except gathering dust due to NBU's instability since v6.  We'll be testing MP4 later this month and hope to be able move back to testing disk staging thereafter.  Our plan was to back-up to disk, and then dump to tape.  This might sound dumb given what I said earlier, but my major issue is my servers just can't send data fast enough - around 9MB/s each.

Inevitably this leads to 'shoe-shining' the tape drives which isn't good.  So the plan was to write to disk first since it doesn't care what speed it's written to, and then dump from there to tape - the idea being that the disk is tuned for read and the files are big due to being back-up tars.  we were hoping to keep 1 cycle (in effect 7 days worth) of backup on disk so most restores would need to go to tape.  In practice, we upgraded to v6 Netbackup and all hell broke loose.

I am now thinking to put the diligent VTL in front of those disks if NBU MP4 still handles disk poorly.

Another alternative is to ditch/partially ditch NBU in favour od Commvault Galaxy which handles disk properly, and has better support for sharepoint and sql back-ups.  However that's a really big $$ alternative so we'll see.

Overall though, if you can get the throughput to the Netapp device (conditional PO - get them to commit to a figure which you work out as acceptable to meet your backup window or they take it back and you don't pay), I think disk to disk to tape is a good method for now.  Theoretically, the diligent VTL would allow me to keep all 7 years of back-ups on disk, but I'd still be pumping the weekly fulls out to tape for off-siting.

Hi guys!

Thanks a lot for all the nice and very interesting inputs. If its ok with you I'll let the question be open for some more time.

Best,
whatisthesolution

I note that NetBackup is now owned by Symantec, and Symantec has a long history of:

1) Taking perfectly good products and screwing them up (e.g. NAV)

2) Having piss-poor support for non-Windoze environments

He he, i like that one!

When we had their anti vir products on our systems(clinets/servers) we had a lot of virus issues due to poor products of antivirus engines and so on and we had to wait for over "10 years" of time on their support phones, including beeing swiched from one to sevral different persons and spending lots of time "on-hold".

Anyway thanks for the comment psi

As i wrote before i will leave the post open for more comments as I think this will help us in get a very good overview over what's best solution for us  and taking a decision from there.

Thanks everyone, KEEP EM COMMING! :-)

Typically it's a combo of both tape and HD that are best. You back up to the HD's more quickly and because they (nowadays) can store far more than tape. You use tape to send critical data off-site for secure storage in a large fire-safe, and it helps with your SOX compliance if your a publicly traded company. If you do HD only, and have more than one location you can replicate the data across if you have enough pipe, but typically it's best to use tape to send off-site for retention. The program you choose to do the backup's again is totally your choice, I've not seen one solution that fits or works for each and every person/company, so you really do need to evaluate them on your own. In my opinion, you should never have to hire someone to setup a product unless it's managed by those folks and not you... I can understand getting training on using a product, but I've never understood hiring someone to install software... that sends up a red flag for me right away.
-rich

I use Veritas Backupexec 11.d for Disk-based backups...

So what happened?

Hi guys - I think we finally have come to an end road with this question, so many nice, competent and very interesting comments from so many people and wow -  thank you every one! - It has really given us some very valuebale inputs/data to go further in purshase phase before deciding which solution to choose.

I have a problem though - there is really no "winner" of the pts in that sense -  you all deserve the points!

So i have a very hard time to find "mr Right", so have a suggestion to do it a bit different this time. I hope this is ok with you guys and can see the fun!

So make a bit fun out of it, shall we make a vote for a winner? :-)  

So the nominees for the best suggestion on backup aaaarre as foollows!: -

MichaelVH
ebarrouk
Disorganise
Yuray
Kenneniah
xuserx2000
richrumble
Tolomir
Chris_Gralike
PsiCop
PowerIT
andyalder
gonzal13
whoajack

May the best Expert win! :-)

So guys wote for the one you is best. There is 15 pll - so the one you think is the best gets 15 pts next 14 ect. worst get 1 pts. ok?

Cheers
whatisthesolution

Doh i hate spelling errors!

So guys -  vote for the one expert you think is the best! There is 15 pll - So the one you think is the top shot get 15 pts. next 14 --> worst get 1 pts. ok?

Oh timeline! 05-03-2006 - end of votes!

And please don't vote on your self! :-) :-)

Yours faithfully
whatisthesolution

EE don't work like that. Just split the points how you see fit.

I know -  just wanted to make it different for one time sake.

But if you guys prefer a split we can do that to..

Kind regards,
whatisthesolution

yeah that's funny, but a bit silly. Just share with whomever you want. I'd hope that while everyone wants points for questions, it's more about helping people, so they can help you back one day.  

Sure no probs. I'd just thought that its hard to find the "right" solution to accept - So i thought i make some fun out of it (I know its a bit silly) - But ok I will make a split.