Help me choose my backup solution!

[kenwyne]

Hi all,

I'm hoping for some creativity in help for my solution!

I have a ESXi 4.1 server, which I am happy to buy an ESX license for, and would like the back the VMs up.

It has local storage.

I am open to buying software, but I do not want another physical server involved in the backup procedure.

I am open to buying a NAS or SAN to backup to, but realise this will not give me the option for off-site backups. (unless there are some NAS' these days which allow drives to be removed!?)

The internet link to the central datacentre is only very small, so I'm unsure how long backups would take to transmit over the WAN.  However there are not many users on this site so that could be an option (overnight for example)  This would probably require some new setup at my datacentre, but I am happy to buy whatever is needed at this site.

Thanks in advance!

[logiboy123]

http://www.veeam.com/virtual-machine-backup-solution-free.html?ad=large

[MarekZdrojewski]

Veeam is the way to go in your situation.

Regards.

[kenwyne]

thanks for the replies, but how would you set it up?

Would you buy a NAS or a little SAN locally to back up onto?

Or simple back up to the central datacentre offsite over the slow WAN link?

[sa2057]

Hi,

I would recommend SAN for backup storage. Veeam does the job backup/replication accross sites

What is the bandwidth between sites?.

Thanks

SA

[kenwyne]

1Mb.  I would think about 250Mb of data to be changed per day.

Is SAN the only way? or can a NAS do the job?

[Tsjo]

As long as you got the bandwidth and disk capacity it doesn't really matter if it's a SAN or NAS.

The most important thing is to build what's suitable for your enviroment.

[kenwyne]

I think the bandwidth to replicate incremental changes is sufficient, but I just wonder what the value is of backing up 280GB to a site over a 1Mb link, by my calculations it would take almost a month to restore them all from there if the ESX crashes.

[Tsjo]

A 1Mb link? That's not suitable for anything I'm afraid.

[kenwyne]

how would you back up VMs offsite then?

[Tsjo]

The easiest solution is to get more bandwidth, you just can't have too much and 1Mb seems small for any kind of business. And if you can't get more bandwidth, try to get more bandwidth.

Another option might be to store the data on a medium (tape? hot-swappable disks?) and physically move it off-site.

[kenwyne]

There is no way whatsoever to increase bandwidth.

I am interested in your other options about tapes etc, are tapes still a modern solution?

Or can you get a NAS/SAN/other HDD device with a hot pluggable drive which contains all the data which you could store offsite?

[Tsjo]

Tapes are viable when you easily need to move data off-site. I don't know if it's modern or not, but they are still in use and with a capacity of 800Gb (LTO-4) can be an alterative to disk storage.

Sorry, don't know any disk system that contains all necessary data so you could move it off-site, but I bet there's something out there.

[sparrowangelste]

tape is more then modern, lookup lto5. you cant beat it for price/storage.

given that you can move off your entire nevironmet on 1 1.5TB tape, its the best solution.

given you have a 1mb connection, sdrs isnt even an option for you. and then you'd have to pay for a colo, or dr site.

A super cheap backup solution would actually be veeam free backup to a 2tb usb drive.  that would fit any budget

[kenwyne]

Hi, I have a full datacentre and for the sake of this discussion costs at the datacentre side can be unlimited.

Restore time is the killer though, if I need to restore all my VMs it will take weeks on that WAN speed, so I am thinking tapes might be good at present, and just get someone to take them home each night.