[BBLISA] Network-based backup in the Boston metro area?

[Charles Homan]

R Gary Cutbill: "I've use the Crashplan Pro service at work, but haven't
setup the local storage option.  I'd have to go back and read their
material to be sure, but I think that local storage is on your own
equipment, not on an appliance that they provide."

We actually already use Crashplan Pro (to local storage) for our
laptops/desktops.  Unfortunately, they don't support the OS (Nexenta) on
our main file servers.   And they do now have an appliance offering, Gary.
 (For general knowledge's sake: with Crashplan Pro, you have the option
with the "Pro" license of backing up to your own device, which can be their
appliance, or not.  You can also back up to their "cloud", either with them
storing the encryption key - which means if they get hacked, so do you - or
by doing your own key management.  Also, your "device" can be a server in
the cloud.)

I agree with Gary - for our use of Crashplan, I'm very pleased.  Users can
do their own restores, but for a VIP, like a C-level employee, I can go in
and do the restore for them using my administrative account.

Matt Finnigan, thanks for the pointer to Axcient.  I will check them out.

Paul Beltrani: "You haven't said if they have an actual DR plan that
requires backups or if this is just a case of backups to check a box.  The
latter may sound absurd to most on this list but it's disturbing how
often institutions
insist on backups because, "You know, backups are important.", without any
plan on what needs to be backed up or what they would do with the backups
in an emergency."

We have a basic DR plan, but you are right that it could certainly use
refinement.  I totally agree with the concept of RPO/RTO. We're growing
rapidly (doubled in number of employees in the last year) so some of these
issues are taking on new importance.  That will definitely be part of this
decision.

My friend John Stoffel wrote, "So have you asked those in your company who
want to move to cloud provider *why* they think this is a good idea?  And
have you run the numbers to show them that the bandwidth costs vs the time
to restore (no one ever cares about backup times...) is prohibitive?

"Also, do you have any rough guestimates of your offsite data needs? Maybe
it would make more sense to have some core business critical data sent
offsite, but other less required data stays on-site with tape media going
offsite?"

Vis a vis "why", our accountants would prefer to spend a little money every
month versus larger capital investments in equipment in one chunk.  (As a
start-up-ish company, it can be harder to get financing on large
purchases.)  That may speak against the idea of having a device at a local
colo facility as well, although that was another idea that is under
consideration.  And yes, I have put numbers in front of them showing the
monthly bandwidth price for each of several restore times, and they aren't
pretty.

For offsite needs, we have about 12 TB of data that needs to be backed up,
although as you and Paul suggest, it is not all of equal importance.  We
can probably trim the "mission critical" list to less than one or two TB.
 The problem is that our data storage has outstripped our tape backup
system, in terms of the time it takes to do a full backup to send offsite.
 It is the expense of a replacement tape system that brought on the
question of avoiding the capital expense in the first place.  That said, we
may need a new tape device anyway, since we have a server with ePHI [HIPAA]
data on it, and we aren't yet comfortable sending that to "the cloud."

Thanks for all of the responses.

Regards,
Charles



On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 2:07 PM, R Gary Cutbill <rgary at kluge.net> wrote:

> I've use the Crashplan Pro service at work, but haven't setup the local
> storage option.  I'd have to go back and read their material to be sure,
> but I think that local storage is on your own equipment, not on an
> appliance
> that they provide.  (There are companies that do it that way, I just
> don't think
> Crashplan is one of them.) Trying that out is on my eventual "todo" list.
>
> We back up both linux servers and personal workstations/laptops (mac &
> windows)
> using Crashplan. For workstations, users can manage their own backups
> and recoveries,
> and I can jump in when they need help. For servers, I take care of it
> myself.
>
> I haven't had to do any disaster-level recovers, but I've lots of small
> recovers for accidentally clobbered files and a handful tests on the
> order of 100G just
> to be sure it all works.  I probably keep around 2TB of data backed up.
>
> I've been very pleased with the service.  Recovery has always gone
> well.  Backups
> are pretty much invisible.  I get automated email telling me that status
> of the
> backups on a regular basis.  Every few months some system gets a wedged
> process and I have to go restart it.  The backup processes keep a local
> cache
> directory. I've found that putting that on it's own filesystem helps
> keep things
> running smoothly because the backup process will let the cache fill the
> disk
> and that can be problematic.
>
> $7.95 per system per month (with unlimited storage) The price is right. My
> only real complaint is administrative. They insist on a credit card as
> payment
> and they don't (e)mail invoices, so you have to go on to their website
> and fetch
> the invoices if your billing department requires them.
>
> Without going into details, I'll say that I used to use Iron Mountain
> (acquired by
> Autonomy). I was very unhappy with them and would recommend avoiding them.
>
> -R. Gary
>
>
> On 5/29/13 12:05 PM, Michael Tiernan wrote:
> > Out of curiosity, have you looked at the CrashPlan appliance?
> >
> > I think they call it CrashPlan Pro (or something like that) but they
> > put an appliance of their's on site and it is part of the overall
> > cloud storage done for speed.
> >
> > I haven't and I'm just wondering what opinions on it are. (Only out of
> > a bystander's curiosity.)
>
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