Evidence from legislation, analyses and other obligations reveals that this data is still very important however, and is often required to be stored for a long time.īesides this, the emergence of ransomware has given tape backup a new role in IT risk management and a renewed evaluation of the BCP (Business Continuity Plan) has taken place. About 70% of the data can be classified as static data, or data which is seldom, if ever, consulted. This type of data is some 10% of the total amount of data being stored. In broad terms, we are now seeing a difference in their use by the classification of data as either static or dynamic. In that context, we see that the use of tape drives is constantly being evaluated and the benefits established anew each time. Sounds like the same type of setup could work for you, though you might want to adjust the amount of data you keep online, depending on your needs to access this data in a timely fashion - 20TB of enterprise-grade storage is a lot more expensive than archiving it to two or three sets of LTO5 tapes that you store in off-site vaults.As mentioned earlier, tape backup is now being used less as a backup medium (although its benefits as a Golden Copy have increased due to ransomware attacks) and more as a storage medium for the long term. This allows us to have easy, online access to that unchanging data (so we don't have to call in a tape anytime an accountant wants to look at something), while maintaining indefinite off-site archives of data we may need to keep forever, and without crushing our backup system. The archive volume is backed up to tape yearly, and the tapes are sent off to Cintas for indefinite storage. Once we no longer expect that the data will need to be modified, (two pay periods later, IIRC) the data is (via script) saved off to an archive volume that's excluded from the regular backups. Our retention period on those backups is 13 months. Initially, it's kept with the rest of the server data that's backed up daily. I think the best solution for this is what we do with our payroll data, which should take a minimal effort for you to implement. If you can colocate your secondary NAS far enough away, then it can be your backup, no tapes needed. We run backups from that secondary NAS so backups don't slow anyone down. Our secondary NAS is on-site (but in a different datacenter from the primary), so we still spool data off to tape for off-site backup. What we do is replicate our data to a second NAS. We have about 50TB of data on a our NAS and it takes over a week to get a full dump of the entire thing using 2 tape drives (one volume takes nearly a week itself because it contains many tiny files). Or dedicate an interface on your NAS to talk to the tape drive to limit impact on other traffic.Ĭan you run full dumps on weekends and only do incrementals during the week? If the problem is changing tapes on the weekend when no one is around, a cheap tape library/autochanger costs a lot less than paying someone to change tapes.Ĭan you segment your data into multiple groups that are small enough to complete within your backup window? Why do your backups have to complete overnight? Fileserver performance? You might be able to constrain the bandwidth of your backup software to limit impact during the day. If you still can't finish a full backup within whatever window of time you have, a common way to speed things up is to do a disk-to-disk backup first and then later copy the backup set off to tape. Since you keep the originals of each shoot untouched and work on a copy, and assuming that at least some of the original pictures are duds, you might be able to cut the amount of data that needs to be backed up in half. What you actually do might be more complex, but conceptually, all the old pictures can be written off to tape (multiple copies!) and not backed up any more.īased on your comments, some additional thoughts: 2 year old pictures that you retain "just in case") doesn't need to be backed up every night, or even every week, it needs to be archived. How long do you need to keep all the data? Are people still making changes to pictures from 2 years ago?ĭepending on the answers to the last two questions, you probably need more of a Archiving System than a radically different backup system.ĭata that is static (e.g.How is the data used once you have it? Are people editing the pictures? Do you keep the originals and generate edited versions?. ![]() Where is it coming from and how much new data are you getting? (you've got this in your question).You need to take a step back and stop thinking "I've got 20TB on my NAS I need to back up!" and develop a storage strategy that takes into account the nature of your data:
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