Offsite storage

[CNCadmin]

I have a question about off site back-up storage, I'm looking for off site storage and was recommended a place their give 60gigs for 80.00 a month. Could I just get my own web space and upload my back-up to it myself? I'm running windows server 2003.

[mvaughn]

How much offsite storage do you need?

[CNCadmin]

Well my server HD are about 160gig so I would say 60gig for now.

[ESjaavik]

Would not using a swappable hard disk be a cheaper solution?
I'm not sure if they are hot-swappable under Server2003, but if you put it in another machine on your LAN, you could bring it down when swapping.

When a 120Gig disk costs $100, and a HD Mobile Rack is $20, it is both fast and convenient.

[CNCadmin]

I need to keep 90 to 180 days of back-ups , in case their is a deletion or if their is a system crash.

[mvaughn]

60 + Gigs is quite a bit a transfer. If you were looking at using a web-hosting service as a makeshift off-site storage facility I would think that hosting fees would be comparable if not more than the place that was recommended to you.

I would impletment a backup procedure that used either hot-swap drives or tapes in a rotation. I'm not sure how often you perform backups but lets say you do them nightly.

You could keep a weeks worth of backups on-site at work in a small fireproof safe... like the kind you can buy at staples. Then on a weekly rotation you would take the previous weeks backup home and put into a second fireproof safe.

Keep at a minimum of two weeks of backups and replace the tapes when they reach their expected end of life, or bad things can happen, and you will be sitting pretty

This would be much more affordable in the long run. Really, why do all that fancy internet based off-site storage anyway, all you really need is a way to recover lost data in the situation that your office burns down, or is swallowed into the earth.

[CNCadmin]

Not really, Tapes cost 60.00 each so that's 600.00 for two weeks and the tape drive with software is about 1,400.00 +/-= 2000.00 +/-for the set-up. At 80.00 month I get over 2 years of off site storage. The tape won't even last that long or repeated use.

[mvaughn]

Yes I know... Drives are much faster and last much longer....

Like I said.. it also depends on how you want to do backups. Nightly, Weekly...

[mvaughn]

If you need to store multiple backups anyway how much space will you really need. If you need a current backup set, and a montly set going back to 180 days. That could potentially equal 7 seperate complete backups each at 60gb for a total of 420gb.

How much would that cost you at the online storage service?

[kong]

Along with whichever storage solution you are choose, are you employing a data redundancy system on your own server? I'm sure you could setup something like Raid 5 on your Windows server. Just a thought