Backing up a server

[Force Flow]

I'm looking for services on the web that backup servers and store the server's data.

"Why not just get backup tape drives?"

Well, we have them on some of the servers, but not all. Tapes are not the best option at the moment. Not all the data fits on these tapes, but the main reason is that the tapes are stored onsite, which is not a good thing to do.

There are 9 servers (2 Mac, 3 novell, 3 windows). We thought about one a big backup setup, but again, it is onsite and $20,000, which is more than we are allotted to spend.

So, total, we have 1.143TB to back up.

To sum it up, we're looking for an online offsite backup service that has the capicity we are looking for.

...and I'm also selling the Brooklin Bridge, if anyone wants it.

[mairving]

You won't find anything online that will backup that kind of data. Plus even with the fatest connection to the Internet possible it would still take forever and a day to transfer the data. I would either store the backup tapes in a fireproof safe or take them to the bank and store them in their vault or both.

[Force Flow]

How about drive imaging?

(we have a T1, btw)

[mairving]

Even with a T1 line at the top speed with nothing else being transferred would be like this:
1143000MB/1.5MB/S = 762000 seconds or about 212 hours.

You can do drive imaging and you should but the problem is that you can only restore the whole image not individual files.

[Force Flow]

True.

Okay, I took a look at the servers and we're actually using about 280GB out of our total capacity.

[glc]

That's still too much data to store online. Get big tape drives and store the backups offsite - even if you have to take the tapes home yourself.

[Force Flow]

I did find several services that do offsite backups, so now we have to look at their prices, capacity, compression and bandwidth.

It's looking more and more like we will have to go for the $20,000 setup. 2 of the services we've looked at estimated $2,000 a month. So... that's about $24,000/yr, where as the backup system would probably be used for 3 years or so.

Thanks, guys