[K12OSN] Data Storage - Redundancy and Backup Suggestions

[Martin Woolley]

On Friday 04 May 2007 01:38, Nick Fenger wrote:
> Hello fellow K12ltsp'ers,
>
> Currently, all of my student's files (and some of mine) are spinning on an
> old 80GB drive in the smb-ldap PDC with no backup and no redundancy. I can
> barely sleep at night.
>
> We are starting a online student portfolio project next year that will add
> lots of data that needs to be safely stored, backed up, etc...
>
> Any suggestions for size, type of drives, should I stick them in the PDC
> and just use software RAID or do I need some kind of Hardware solution?
> Should I buy some kind of external drive array? How will I know if
> something goes wrong? and what is the best way to backup all of this data?
>
> We are a single site independent charter school with a maximum enrollment
> of 320 students K-12.

Hardware RAID is far superior to software RAID.  What we do is
- the students data lives on a file server with a RAID 5 array.
- every night this data is copied to another RAID 5 array at the opposite end 
of the school, in a completely separate building. We use rsync.
- every night this backup is further backed up to tape.
- the tapes are stored in a  third part of the school.

The only weakness in our solution is someone is assuming that the wooden 
bookshelf the tapes live in is fireproof, but I don't worry to much.

In theory our recovery strategy is
- if the file server dies, the backup server can become the file server.
- if the backup server dies, no problems, just get another file server and 
continue the scheme
- if an aeroplane crashes and wipes out the whole site, tough, although I do 
have the a tape under the bed at home so we could get back some of the 
students data (albeit  a month or two out of date).
-- 
Regards
Martin Woolley
ICT Support
Handsworth Grammar School
Isis Astarte Diana Hecate Demeter Kali Inanna

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