Massive Hard Drive Requirements

depending on you budget, I'd recommend something like a HP 1U server with an external SCSI drive array. The good thing about these are that you can put up to 14 drives in the ext array so that should cover you for a while. However, if you do start running out of space you can daisy chain another array off the back of the first. Hopefully that will give you sufficient growth space without having to look into huge internal storage or DFS-ing data across multiple servers.

Check out a program called Backup Assist. It's inexpensive, uses Windows 2003 Server's built in Backup program, and can go to a variety of media.

In the server, I'd just toss in 2-4 1TB drives, they're certainly cheap enough and fast enough.

For backup you can just get a set of external drives and do incremental backups as much of the data will be static. Then have some of those external drives taken offsite weekly/monthly/etc for safety and redundancy.

It should work out to be a relatively inexpensive solution (when compared with just buying a tape drive alone).

SO many solutions out there for this kind of thing...

I will add ROBOCOPY to the mix.


and...

Buffalo Terastations w/ Hot Swappable 750 GB HDDs (x4) ... 2 of those... will give you 6 TB of space, 3 for storage and 3 TB to split in groups of 4 750 GB HDDs for different backup set types.

Robocopy will handle all that for you, unless you want to jump to a compression backup system but for files like music and video... compression doesn't help all that much... it will help your file space though for items like docs and excel sheets... database tables... etc.

My company's final product is digital video and we probably rack up about .5TB per year with 12 % growth.  With this set up it works like this:

4 750gb HDDs... (again I have the same set up for simple storage)
each year, until we go over .75 TB per year of video gets copied to one of the 4 and then i take that HDD OUT and buy a single to replace it... then the one i took out gets put into a public storage place.

This set up works great because I can easily buy say 8 smaller HDDs to run revolving weekly backups on non-video files too and 4 stay in and 4 come out and go to the storage location.

it takes one not-that-modern pc to run it....

both terastations would be plugged directly into the PC, unless you have them separated of on their own gigabit switch running Cat6s into a high end network card. blah blah blah...

but this works and allows for growth, I think.

Cheapest solution these days is using hard drives as the backujp media. 60G/Year is not a lot.. a .5TB drive raided and then mirrored and copying the files to a NAS or backup computer and if you want take the hdd's and store them offsite.. both fast and you are reasonably certain that later on down the road you will be able to use the backup media.. juar try and buy a qic-80 drive these days..

mr_crust, they want backups,   not speed, making a raid 0 array for 2TB, one drive dies they lose everything..... not a great advice for long term storage.

if anything a raid 5 with hot spare and think, with 60G a year, in 5 years, you dont think storage mediums will have grown :) but others have already given the best advice and options.

Run Microsoft DPM Server on another server.

We use a tivoli system from IBM currently.  We backup approx 600GB per night using three LTO1 drives.  Our system is going to be replaced with a newer system and will likely go to a disk - disk - tape system.  

We would keep our current tivoli and change the setup slightly and then go with LTO3 drives.  

We currently run about 5.5 TB on line at all times.  We try to take a snapshot of our system weekly but so far it has worked less than 20% of the time.  Our users are usually keeping files open which is why the snapshot fails.  

The range of suggestions here are varied.

What is your budget?
Does the client have multiple sites?

There are two problems here:
(1) Build a scalable storage solution that is reliable and fast.
(2) Back up the data on the proposed solution.

Proposal:
(a) Contact Storevault (a preferred vendor in my book).  Look into getting a couple Storevault SANs with four (4) 500GB disks to start.  Configure these as RAID10 for 1TB of initial storage.  The setup and purchase cost of 1TB is the "sweet spot" that will hold you for a considerable amount of time and give you the best speed for the dollars spent.

(b) Implement the RAID10 Storevault SAN using iSCSI and two LUNS.  Each department should be allocated a single LUN.  The StoreVault will have four (4) NICs.  Configure the NICs as two pair of teamed interfaces.  Each department can then access the SAN through one team while the second team can be set aside for replication between the first StoreVault device and the second device.

(c) Configure a second storevault device identically to the first.  The second device should replicate from the first on an hourly basis.  This second device should be (preferrably) kept off site.  At a minimum, the second SAN should be placed offsite and allowed to replicate once per day.  In the event of disaster, the company can operate (albeit slowly) off the offsite SAN.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

I agree with SamCaldwell that the StoreVault filers are a solid solution and cost effective.  A correction or two may be in order, however.  The devices in question are NetApp technology.  StoreVault is a division, or rather, was a division of NetApp.  NetApp has since eliminated the division, and StoreVault will henceforth be a product line within the NetApp family of products.  

There are two products in the NetApp StoreVault product line - the S300 and the S550.  The S300 will scale to 8 - 500 GB SATA drives.  The S550 will scale to 12 - 1 TB drives.  StoreVault only supports RAID4 and RAID DP (a modified form of RAID 6).  Both products come with iSCSI SAN and NAS capability.  Replication is optional.  But, all features are extremely easy to use.  And, the products are extremely reliable.  All drives must be identical, a RAID 4 limitation.  250 GB, 500 GB, 750 TB and 1 TB drives are available.

Entry level price for a 1 TB S300 is $2995.  Email or call if you want to know more.