Backing up your network

Search SMBresource

home

step-by-step startup

idea center

sales for Small and medium business.

managing in the SMB

small business marketing

specific
small retail
health care
small manufacturing
attorneys
accountants
restaurant
small construction
lawn care business
on-line business
consulting business
non-profit business
business franchises
real estate

Backing up your data

Small Data backups (less than 50GB)
Small companies, or companies with small amounts of data can still get by relatively inexpensively, and they have a wide variety of solutions to chose from. We usually recommend a minimum of DDS4 tapes and 20/40 GB drive. If the amount of data you are backing up exceeds 20GB you should go with a bigger drive and faster if your budget permits. A couple of things to keep in mind with a smaller backup

It's OK to have the tape drive on a production server.
Tape drive should be on its own SCSI controller
Make sure that you have all of the backup software components. Exchange, SQL server and open files usually require another piece of software
Backup nightly and have a full backup weekly
Rotate full backups to an off-site location
Replace your tapes regularly. Every year is what we recommend, 18 months is acceptable, never use a tape for more than 24 months.

The critical piece for these backups is constant testing

Your tech or consultant should check the status of the backup on a monthly basis and perform a recovery test of a random file.

Medium Data Backups (50GB to 200GB)

When backing up this amount of data things can get tricky. You should try and isolate the backup server to increase speed. A single drive SDLT will allow you to backup all of your data to a single tape. Connect the backup server at as high a speed as possible to your network.

Large Data Backups (200GB and higher)

Backing up this much data is a complex operation. You'll need multiple tape drives in many instances and tape loaders as well. Tracking the back-up logs becomes mission critical. The short solution to backing up this much data is to get the data to the drives as quickly as possible, and then get the data to the tape as quickly as possible. What this means is you may need an interim backup piece such as a SNAP appliance RAID array. This will allow you to do nightly backups to a fast hard disk device, and then dump the data on a weekly basis to tape drives. The latest LTO tape drives are extemely fast, very reliable and can quickly backup large amounts of data.

Back to SMB Technology