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Are the backups local? You can't prevent against a flood, fire, or theft. Are the backups off-site? You can't protect against a company going bankrupt, someb

Are the backups local? You can't prevent against a flood, fire, or theft. Are the backups off-site? You can't protect against a company going bankrupt, somebody cutting the wrong wire, or your ISP farting. Backups should be both local and off-site. Which is what Dropbox provides, actually.

kamjam 14y ago
but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that the only points of failure are within my control Hahaha, when he said that I immediately thought I'd like to see him control flood, fire, theft or "other acts of god". Like you say, backups need to be local and off-site. No single point of failure, that is the key!
- niggler 14y ago
  The thing which would take out all of my backups is if the entire country was flooded or if there were a coordinated attack on all places (it's spread out throughout the country)
niggler 14y ago
I have four backups, one of which is local on a hard drive in my office, one on tapes at my house, and two sitting in drives in separate data centers. And yes driving to the data centers is a pain :/ Regardless of the level of replication it provides, it lulls you into a false sense of security (which is probably just as bad as not having backups in the first place)
- SquareWheel 14y ago
  That's interesting. Just random data centers you're renting space from, or are you employed there? If the former, I didn't realize you could just hand off a hard drive and be on your way.
  - niggler 14y ago
    My main business is in finance, so I rent data center space primarily in chicago, nyc area (mostly north jersey), virginia and los angeles. The minimum lease is 4RU, but I end up using a 1U server and a 1U 10/40GbE switch (the switch takes up half the depth, so i stick an ethernet router behind it), leaving 2U unused. I had a failure once (on an iMac with a seagate 1TB hard drive that was later recalled) but since I had a local backup I didn't lose anything. I started exploring solutions and realized that, since I had space, I could spend a few grand and get a barebones server with a few hard drives and stick it in space I'm already paying for. This turns out to be really convenient, especially since technicians at the data center can do basic maintenance work (like hot-swapping drives) for you at a reasonable rate (generally 100-200/hr, billable in 15 minute increments; you ship them the drive and they do their magic). In terms of absolute cost (not counting cost synergies due to leveraging the business space), each 4U lease runs from 100-500/mo with 10Mb internet (which is not bad for backing up small amounts of data; for larger amounts, shipping drives or just driving back and forth is faster and easier). Yes, dropbox is dramatically cheaper, but this way I have much more control over what's going on.
    - SquareWheel 14y ago
      Sounds like a good setup. Thanks for the details.

kamjam 14y ago

but at least I can sleep well at night knowing that the only points of failure are within my control Hahaha, when he said that I immediately thought I'd like to see him control flood, fire, theft or "other acts of god". Like you say, backups need to be local and off-site. No single point of failure, that is the key!

niggler 14y ago
The thing which would take out all of my backups is if the entire country was flooded or if there were a coordinated attack on all places (it's spread out throughout the country)

niggler 14y ago

I have four backups, one of which is local on a hard drive in my office, one on tapes at my house, and two sitting in drives in separate data centers. And yes driving to the data centers is a pain :/ Regardless of the level of replication it provides, it lulls you into a false sense of security (which is probably just as bad as not having backups in the first place)

SquareWheel 14y ago
That's interesting. Just random data centers you're renting space from, or are you employed there? If the former, I didn't realize you could just hand off a hard drive and be on your way.
- niggler 14y ago
  My main business is in finance, so I rent data center space primarily in chicago, nyc area (mostly north jersey), virginia and los angeles. The minimum lease is 4RU, but I end up using a 1U server and a 1U 10/40GbE switch (the switch takes up half the depth, so i stick an ethernet router behind it), leaving 2U unused. I had a failure once (on an iMac with a seagate 1TB hard drive that was later recalled) but since I had a local backup I didn't lose anything. I started exploring solutions and realized that, since I had space, I could spend a few grand and get a barebones server with a few hard drives and stick it in space I'm already paying for. This turns out to be really convenient, especially since technicians at the data center can do basic maintenance work (like hot-swapping drives) for you at a reasonable rate (generally 100-200/hr, billable in 15 minute increments; you ship them the drive and they do their magic). In terms of absolute cost (not counting cost synergies due to leveraging the business space), each 4U lease runs from 100-500/mo with 10Mb internet (which is not bad for backing up small amounts of data; for larger amounts, shipping drives or just driving back and forth is faster and easier). Yes, dropbox is dramatically cheaper, but this way I have much more control over what's going on.
  - SquareWheel 14y ago
    Sounds like a good setup. Thanks for the details.