How much redundancy is to much? and how would you setup a backup in a business?

Forums › IT Pro and developers › How much redundancy is to much? and how would you setup a backup in a business?

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#84758 7-Jun-2011 20:47

I have been asked by my boss to setup a backup system for the computers at work. There are 2 P.O.S machines and the bosses office machine. 1 of the P.O.S machines runs the MYSQL database needed for the P.O.S.

My plan is to get another machine in with 2 drives in raid 1, put in the back office running as a headless server. Move the MYSQL database to it and have all the machines backup important data like Emails, documents etc (Daily?). Then really important data is then backed up offsite with CrashPlan (weekly?).

Anything else that you guys think I should do? Or anything that you would change?

Thanks

davidcole

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#478737 7-Jun-2011 21:15

Why not just implement a tape based system with tape offsiting? Sounds old school but still used.

Either that or look at something like Acronis Server to a central computer, but you still have the issue of offsiting.

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#478739 7-Jun-2011 21:21

Cost is an issue and I don't want to make things complicated with Windows server. I was just going to use XP

davidcole

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#478741 7-Jun-2011 21:24

Then why not just look at a total cloud solution? How much data (once the initial is done) are you talking?

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#478744 7-Jun-2011 21:27

Replicate the mysql to a SLAVE database. Use a linux flavor of your choice. Use rsync to copy any samba shares. Should work fine over an adsl connection. All up a dual core Atom would be $250 (mini-iTX and ram with case and PSU) + cost of two hard drives. About $350 + GST total.

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#478784 7-Jun-2011 22:46

This is how I would do it:

Purchase ShadowProtect Desktop Edition for the 3 workstations.
This should be around $125 +gst each.
Get your headless machine as you were going to do but I wouldn't worry about two HDDs in RAID1.
This machine wouldn't need to be very powerful at all, just needs to have a big enough hard drive to take the backups from the workstations.
I would also leave all your data as it is now so don't bother moving the SQL database if it is working fine now.
Get 3 portable USB HDDs for offsite backups, again big enough to hold the backups from the workstations.

Setup ShadowProtect on each of the 3 workstations to backup over the network to the headless machine.
ShadowProtect comes with a free version of a program, ImageManager, that can then be setup, on the headless machine, to mirror the workstation backups to the USB drives.

ShadowProtect does full image backups of the entire hard drive so all data, including SQL databases, and operating system are backed up. You can set it to backup regularly, as often as every 15 minutes if you like, and there are a few different ways of backing up. EG: A full backup once a week, say on a Sunday, then incremental backups during the week (as often as you like). It can then be set to keep a weeks backup set (Full backup and appropriate incrementals for the week) for as long you want, before it starts overwriting them, so that your backup drive doesn't get full.
And now because you are only doing incremental backups during the day/week the backups only take a few seconds normally and doesn't affect the use of the machine as it happens in the background.

On the headless machine, as soon as a backup is completed from a workstation, ImageManager will see the new backup file, verify it and then copy it to the currently attached USB drive automatically. It also monitors the USB drive so if you remove one and connect another one it will see that it doesn't have all the backup files and automatically update it with all the backup files that are missing from it.
You use the 3 USB HDDs in rotation so there is always one offsite, one connected to the headless machine and one in transit.

This backup solution works well because the backups are full system images so if one of the workstations dies you can do a full system restore to a new box (shadowprotect includes hardware independant restore) and be up and running again quickly. You can also browse the backup files to restore individual files or folders.
You also have a full backup set on a portable HDD to take offsite.

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#478787 7-Jun-2011 22:52

TBH I would look to a cloud provider for your database and get redundancy in your internet connections (e.g. DSL + 2degrees USB dongle). Your own MySQL setup isn't going to beat them in terms of availability.

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#478798 7-Jun-2011 23:27

Unfortunately DSL is not fast enough for an offsite database due to the way program was designed. The boss wants a set and forget setup where he is not having to cart round disks and such, but looking at shadow protect it looks alot nicer than acronis. Will have to do some more looking before around.

Thanks for all your input guys!

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#478810 7-Jun-2011 23:54

Decal: Unfortunately DSL is not fast enough for an offsite database due to the way program was designed. The boss wants a set and forget setup where he is not having to cart round disks and such, but looking at shadow protect it looks alot nicer than acronis. Will have to do some more looking before around.

Thanks for all your input guys!

If the swapping a portable USB HDD is too much for the boss then ImageManager does have the option of uploading the incremental backup files to an FTP site as well.
You do however need to have ImageManager installed on the FTP server as well to manage the backup files.

Zeon

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#478811 7-Jun-2011 23:57

Decal: Unfortunately DSL is not fast enough for an offsite database due to the way program was designed. The boss wants a set and forget setup where he is not having to cart round disks and such, but looking at shadow protect it looks alot nicer than acronis. Will have to do some more looking before around.

Thanks for all your input guys!

Lol how much data gets returned in your queries?! Man sounds pretty odd for a POS database?

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#478868 8-Jun-2011 09:52

Alot because it is also a customer management system. So when searching for customers and such it drags up photos and random crap attached to their file.