[ale] disk backup!

[Jeff Hubbs]

Ken Nagorski wrote:
> > 
> > Hi there,
> > 
> > Please help. We are using tape at the moment and it is so lame. The
> > overpriced tape units we have are broke more than they 
> work. My boss is
> > looking at those Maxtor or whoever it is that makes a disk 
> unit that runs
> > win2000. Please help me I will be so pissed if they but 
> those. Plus there
> > has got to be a product built with linux to do disk 
> backup... Shit all of
> > our servers are Linux...
> > 
> > Any suggestions.
> 
> Backup media, it seems, will never be able to keep up with primary
> storage in terms of data density. (I know I'll probably eat those
> words next year, but whatever.) That being the case, and with
> hard-disk storage being dirt cheap these days, it probably makes
> sense to build RAID into every server, and just replace
> the disks as they fail. You could build a network server just
> for this, and have the other machines dump their data to it
> each night.
> 
> -- Joe

You need RAID in every server in most cases, yes, but that does not solve
the problem of achieving recoverability in situations more serious than a
disk crash.  You still need a way for the disk contents to survive
progressively-escalating levels of harm (you get to decide what your highest
survivable level will be).  The next level up from disk crash would be loss
of volume/filesystem - the result of an ill-placed rm -Rf, an overzealous
but undereducated sysadmin ("no one seems to need all these files in
/usr..."), an app, OS, or SCSI controller gone mad, etc.  Up from there is
loss of system (PS fires or metal shavings on chipset pins can get you
there) up to the point of total and irreparable machine destruction (a
really good fire or a really bad disgruntled employee or burglar).  Higher
levels destroy more and more.  Irreparable loss of a building is not in the
realm of fantasy.  You get the idea.

Even the lower levels call for getting the data *away from the machine,* and
the distance "away" that you can achieve has everything to do with how much
you want to spend on t'comm and how much data you plan to move and how
often.  Joe is right - there's a big capacity/bandwidth gap between disk
drives and backup media right now, and I think that recoverability of IT
environments is suffering as a whole as a result.  I say, DON'T LET IT!  

Knox Software Arkeia is reputed to be a pretty good cross-platform
enterprise backup product; you could surely approximate its function thru
scripts but perhaps not as snazzily.  Even with that, though, you still have
to pay careful attention to where the tapes are going and what kinds of
scenarios can still kill you.  

- Jeff


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