WHAT IS THE BEST BACKUP
STRATEGY FOR YOUR SERVER?

Backing up, historically

In 2007 I wrote a report on backup solutions and my conclusion, on balance, was that tape-based backups were tried and true and remained the way to go. I said that as long as someone swapped the tape everyday and took that tape off-site, then it was a cost-effective, reliable and secure solution.
Fast forward three years and it’s time to re-visit those conclusions…

Backing up in 2010

Today, the trend in the computer industry is to slowly but steadily move away from tape and towards disk. There are four main reasons for this gradual change:

1. The ever-increasing amount of data stored on a server means the time taken to back it all up onto tape is increasing. This problem gets even bigger if there is more than one server. Backing up to disk is a lot faster;
2. Swapping tape cartridges on a daily basis involves a human process, and is thus prone to forgetfulness and mistakes;
3. These days, disk drives are not only cheaper than tape drives devices, they’re also far more reliable over the long term; and
4. Restoring data from tape will always be a clumsy, tedious, slow and mistake prone process. Restoring from disk is quicker and simpler.

However, there is a problem with backing up to disk – we need to ensure that the data is stored off-site to protect ourselves from a disaster event like theft or fire. There’s two ways to achieve this:

1. Use an external hard disk solution that incorporates a chassis (so that drives can be swapped in and out of the chassis without touching the cables connected to the server); and
2. Backup data to an off-site location across the internet, using software that is specifically designed for the task so that it is performed in a reliable, secure and cost-effective fashion.
   

The best server backup strategy is …

We think the best backup strategy available today is based on the principle of BUDR (bud-r):

1. BU - backing up to disk directly connected to the server; and
2. DR - backing up across the internet to an off-site location so that a disaster recovery process can be performed if the server is non-recoverable.

NetCare Remote Backup is a comprehensive backup and recovery service that ensures backups are done reliably. It provides regular backups of your server throughout the day, not just overnight, so that the amount of data potentially lost is always minimized. This is complemented by an overnight backup of changes in your data across the internet to an offsite secure server at our premises. The whole backup process is monitored by our system and automatic alerts are generated if any problems occur.
This effectively means you’ve got two restore options available to you at all times – your copy and our copy.

The price for peace of mind

To get started with NetCare Remote Backup, we need to back up a full copy of your system data to an external hard drive and transfer this to our backup server. This minimizes the cost and time of initially copying all your data across the internet. From then on, only the changes will be copied. We normally recommend you purchase this external hard drive so that it can be subsequently used as your local backup drive on your server.
Our initial setup fee is $352, plus the cost of the hard drive and chassis, if you need one.
Our monthly fee for NetCare Remote Backup is based upon the maximum amount of data stored on our servers according to the following table:

No Contract commitment

NetCare Remote Backup is provided as a month-by-month service and can be cancelled or paused at any time. You will be invoiced on the last day of each month for the maximum amount of storage you have used during that month. NetCare Remote Backup is only available to clients that have a NetCare plan and is subject to Product Terms, a copy of which must be signed prior to the service commencing.

We also have a reduced service – NetCare Onsite Backup – for those organizations that just require onsite copies of the data, and who will take daily responsibility for taking the external disk media off-site daily. These is no setup fee for NetCare Onsite Backup and our monthly service fee for this is $33, which includes all daily monitoring, configuration changes and software upgrades.