Matt Shields spake the following on 12/4/2006 1:53 PM:

Check out Bacula.org. Very good system, we use it with about 40 hosts and do disk-to-disk to our iscsi sata array. I also has windows clients that support VSS.

Matt Shields Cyberbite Network - www.cyberbite.com

On 12/4/06, Administrator administrator@insurancejournal.com wrote:

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Hello, i wrote in a week ago and was overwhelmed by the response, but maybe i need to be more specific.

We need to get a rock solid backup system in place, basically a self-running system that would be set up once and then periodically checked on.

We have 2 Windows machines (NT4, 2003 Server) and 3 Linux Machines (Centos 4.4, Centos 4.3 and Red Hat 3).

Two machines are hosted locally (Centos 4.4 & NT4).

We have a Dell Server that just needs new hard drives and that could be setup to be a backup server, but we want to be sure that we have off-site backups of the local machines (so we could ship the machine to a hosting facility once it is set up).

We would like to have the ability to have a rolling archive of about 30 days.

Since we are a publishing company, our archives are important but not critical to our daily operations and they don't change. The current projects are changed daily and need to be archived daily.

We are open to the options that were suggested a week ago, but we are thinking that we need someone to implement it. This is very important and not something that should be left to someone who is 'learning as he goes'.

We need a clear and solid plan along with someone who could execute it.

Please let me know of any people who are in/around San Diego, California and could help us- or someone who could accomplish the task flawlessly with a remote connection.

Many thanks, Noah

I think he is in need of a skilled individual that he can contract the job out to. I am on his side but don't currently have the skill set. When you need it now and you need it right, you can't afford to experiment. I would recommend a local archive, with after hours sync to the remote. That way you have speedy restores during accidents, and everything is safe if " the building explodes".

You could probably buy something pre configured, with all the clients and needed bells and whistles for less than $10,000 US. That won't get you the remote server, but probably will have the capability of adding one later. You could get it working in-house, then build the remote server and sync locally. Then you could ship it off to the colo facility and finish the linking and then you would have less data to sync over the slower remote link. The remote server could be added for not much more than the hardware costs.

If you are looking for much lower cost than that, you will have to do it yourself. If you could estimate how much data you need to store, you would need to size the backup server at least 4 times that amount to make sure you have enough room. You don't want to have to ship the backup server back to you because you ran out of space.

If you are in a hurry, you could just store the live projects on an online storage site like evault or livevault (not a recommendation, just some names I remember off the top of my head) for the interim so you have backups now, and then you will have some time to find a solution.