Hey I've got a friend who I am helping back up some of his work data. He works in Multi-Media, 2 NAS servers with 4 TB HDD's in RAID on each. It's XRAID or something stupid like that but I?m not concerned about that.
He needs to back up some of the information, I suggested tapes. So he won't wont to have lots of 200gig tapes sitting in the cupboard, I thought might as well go for a drive that stores 800gb per tape using something like the QUANTUM LTO-4 HH BLACK 5.25" INTERNAL DRIVE, 3GB/S SAS, $3500. I think that?s good bang for his buck. He doesn't have any room for error. The footage saved most of the time can only be taken once and loosing it can cost 100's of thousands.
I'll find out the NAS server properties later but correct me if I?m wrong, I'd have to run the tape drives through a pc and drag the data over the network from the NAS server.
100's of thousands, as in over "00,000? If that kind of money is riding on it Id suggest professional backup solutions instead of just setting one up yourself.
NAS tape setups = some NAS's can have a tape unit directly attached.
Your friend needs to consider what he wants from a backup system - is it a second copy of data? archiving? co-located data? Tape solutions are very expensive per/gb. You mentioned there is no room for error - tape drives/media are prone to problems.
I agree with rip - if his data is worth a lot of money he should talk to a data storage & redundancy specialist.
I'm assuming we are talking about HD video footage in which case why isn't he using a video archieve medium. I know it adds a little bit to production time but it give you excellent data security.
He works in the government, so all the money comming in is taken away, the get a small budget to work with. Haha now it doesn't seem as important to most people as it's the government but he's a friend of mine and they don't so much work like the rest of government, all of government pc's, got him onto his own internet, switches, set up the nas servers.
Just need the best way to back up his video without costing the world. I think tape drives as they are around "30 a tape, and a once off payment for $3500, thats pretty good.
I've already talked to him about onsite and offsite backups and he's not going for it, stuff it I don't think it's that important for him because of building they work in and the server room they have access to store the tapes.
Personally I'm not a big fan of the backup tapes these days, as has been said they are pretty expensive per GB when you start getting into things that large and can be annoying to manage.
Otherwise there are ones you can self manage like BackupPC in Linux which I use on a daily basis where I work.
but if its that important Id always suggest talking to people who do backups for a living.
...and if you need offsite backups, external hard drives are great bang for buck. Much less likely to fail on you (as long as you treat them with respect) and much easier to restore from (all PCs/servers have USB).
OK that explains why he has a tapeless* workflow. Most guys I know who use a tapeless workflow work their backups like this. USB drives for backups current projects. HDD(using either a caddy bay on the computer or hot swap bay) for archieves x2 Everything is always in 2 spots as a result. Large drives and cheep and if stored right are great for archieving large quantities of video data most of my HD projects fit on 500Gb drive with the final render using cineform loseless codecs.
The archieve and data storage issue is the main reason that despite the fact they are using digital capture and workflow tape is still extensivily used in TV.
The main issue they face at the moment is storage. They are running out. Would it be a good idea to have a larger say 8tb NAS to store data. It was what I was going for when he asked for my help but it's more expensive and he conciders it messy having 3 NAS servers. The nas servers now don't even run on UPS.... I think they should have 2 copys of their data though.
It sounds like you have a number of requirements here and addressing one won't take care of the others..
Archiving? Maybe not important Redundant hardware (power, harddrives) & power protection/battery backup - these depend on how mission critical the data is Offsite backup - extremely important if the data is worth anything Storage - running out of disk space. planning for future growth? does it need to be performance storage or is it just a dumping ground for past work?
What sort of budget are you working with?
We can keep giving advice via the forum but it would be best to talk with a storage specialist.
What I've come up with to get rid of a few issues like security, proper back ups, etc, i'll make a server. This will also make it easy to get the files to tape if he needs and use the nas drives to backups and also for quick recovery.