Dentplex

The biggest challenge facing the modern business today is to select and set up a truly reliable network-attached storage server to save and share important data securely and to increase the work efficiency of different departments. Meanwhile, it is also important to set up a reliable backup policy to reduce the risk of data loss.

What is your Disaster Recovery Plan for your server systems?
Your choice of DATA backup plan
·      Tapes
·      USB drive (hard drive-usb)
·      Ness Raid Server unit

Tape DATA Backup

Why use tape backup drive

By storing your data on backup tapes your are protecting your data cost effectively and safely.
Before you set up any form of tape backup drives on your system you must decide what backup strategy to use and what tape drive system best suits your needs.

Using a Tape backup drive will allow backup of large volumes of data for companies and individual users. The tape backup solution method is today the one which is often used, despite that it takes longer time than to copy the data directly to a backup disk.

     removable hard drives and a plethora of other storage gadgets? Tape although perceived in relative terms as a dinosaur, is perfect for backup.

At what interval should you take backup?

Typically, at the end if each day a server backup is taken. Just insert the tape, start up the backup process and let it run overnight. If your server suffers a breakdown disaster, at least you have saved from the previous day all your files.

Tape Rotation.

The tape backup solution would ideal involve using one new tape for each backup. This means buying a new tape for each day of the operations of your business. This is not what you call cost-effective for business. Tape is inexpensive, but not that cheap!

This is the reason we talk about "tape rotation". To use tapes from previous backups is what is called tape rotation. The easiest tape rotation schedule is to have one tape for each day of the week. Label the tapes as: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

You can then restore the data from anyone of the tapes in your library - or in our case, from any of day of the past the week. With this strategy you only need five tapes. But it only store one week of data backup history.

Grandfather-Father-Son - A Case Study Tapes Backups

The grandfather-father-son scheme is the most commonly used method, and includes backing up data the following way:

·       once each day – on the "son tapes" ( 6 Tape need) ·       once each week – on the "father tapes" (1 tape need) ·       once each month – on the "grandfather tapes" (12 tapes need) ·       total need 19 tapes

This method is far more effective than the five-tape rotation, but requires the use of more tapes.

With strategy you get the ability to restore backup data from the last week, any Monday from the last month, plus from any month for as many months you have taken tape backups. Variations from this strategy are available, and this provides a trade off between the number of required tapes, and the number of tapes available for each monthly.

Pro for tape

Cheaper per storage rate then hard drives

Virus cannot write then self on tape (unlike hard drives)

Tapes won’t get damage if dropped

The Id of the tape (drive letter) does not change and therefore you don’t have to worry about your backup software changes settings for ID address

You need a tape backup drive to read the data, so not everyone can read what’s on the tape because they don’t have the tape drive system in place (Unlike an usb hard)

Against for tapes

Slow

The tape system will be out of date within 5 years and longer long made from the suppliers

Tapes may break within time

Tapes may be erased near strong magnet

Set up cost

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Grandfather-Father-Son - A Case Study for hard drive

The grandfather-father-son scheme is the most commonly used method, and includes backing up data the following way:

·       once each day – on the "son hard drive" ( 6 hard drives need)

·       once each week – on the "father hard drive" (1 hard drive need)

·       once each month – on the "grandfather hard drive" (12 hard drive need)

·       yearly 1 hard drive

·       total 20 hard drives require

Pro for Hard drive Fast to write data Cheap to replace Larger size then tape Faster to transfer data back to pc You can check your back up data without restoring the data

Against for Hard Drive

The Id of the Hard drive (drive letter) May change and therefore you need to check the setting to make sure that the letter is the same as your backup software settings whenever you plug a new hard drive

If someone finds the drive they can read your data

Virus and worn can be written onto your hard drive and you may be backing up your data with a virus or worn

If drop may damage the drive

More moving parts then tape (unless it a Solid state drive –like a usb memory stick)

A virus may install when checking your data using a pc that has a worn or virus installed and you may transfer this back onto the server.

When using a hard drive back up plan always may sure that you have the latest virus software on any pc when using these drive 

Always scan the drive to make sure that no worms or virus are on the drives

Advanced Ness RAID Management with Hot-swap Design

The NAS offers advanced RAID 0, 1, Single, and JBOD disk configurations. It also supports hot-swap design that a failed drive can be replaced by hot swapping without turning off the server. Besides, the best-in-class RAID on the NAS brings users a higher level of data security by allowing one more hard drive failure than other NAS of the same level.

Online RAID Capacity Expansion
The storage capacity of a RAID configuration can be expanded by replacing the hard drives with larger ones. All the data will be kept and seamlessly moved to the newly installed hard drives. There is no need to turn off the server during the process.

Online RAID Level Migration
You can upgrade the disk configuration to higher RAID level with the data retained. There is no need to turn off the server during the process.

Virtual Disk Drive (VDD) adds flexibility to storage expansion along with ease of management
The unique "Virtual Disk Drive" adds flexibility to expand the capacity of NAS. By using the built-in iSCSI initiator, the NAS can connect to other iSCSI targets on the network and turn them into virtual disks, which become multiple single volumes on the NAS. Up to 8 virtual disks can be stacked. The NAS serves as the storage stack chaining master. The user only needs to connect to this single entry (QNAP NAS) and is able to reach and use all the iSCSI target storages on the network.

Built-in iSCSI Target Service
The TS-219P+ can act as a NAS and iSCSI target server at the same time. It provides a cost-efficient iSCSI solution to set up an IP-SAN. You can make use of the built-in iSCSI target service to add up to 256 iSCSI devices. Different iSCSI Target LUNs (Logical Unit Number) can be defined as storage expansion or backup destination of the existing application servers, such as database servers and mail servers.

Furthermore, the "Virtual Space Allocation" (Thin Provisioning) feature is provided which allows you to flexibly allocate the capacity of iSCSI LUN (Logical Unit Number). When the physical storage capacity of the volume is going to be full, you can easily expand the storage capacity by "Online RAID Capacity Expansion", or adjust/ remove the current unused volume space according to the demands.

S.M.A.R.T & Advanced HDD Health Scanning (HHS)
The NAS supports Hard Disk Drive S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) for monitoring the hard drive status. Moreover, the NAS is embedded with HHS Technology which supports disk checking and bad blocks scanning.

Complete Backup Solution

Windows Client Backup Software - NetBak Replicator
QNAP NetBak Replicator is a utility provided for you to back up the files and folders from Windows PCs to Turbo NAS and restore the data. This software supports instant data backup and recovery, file filter, scheduled backup, and more.

Third-party Backup Software
The NAS is compatible with popular third-party backup software, for example, Acronis True Image, CA BrightStor ARCserve Backup, EMC Retrospect, and Symantec Backup Exec.

Remote Replication by Rsync
The data stored on the NAS can be remotely backed up to another QNAP Turbo NAS or to Rsync servers by Rsync over the network.

One-touch-copy Backup
You can configure the one-touch-copy button on the front of the NAS to copy the data from the NAS to an external storage device or vice versa. The NAS supports FAT32/EXT3/EXT4; NTFS and HFS+ file systems for high speed data transfer and enhanced compatibility between the NAS and Windows PC or Mac OS X.

Powerful All-in-one Server Features File Server Turbo NAS allows file sharing across Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX platforms. It also supports WebDAV for you to access the share folders via HTTP/HTTPS protocol remotely. FTP Server You can set up Turbo NAS as an FTP server and share the files conveniently with your friends or customers. Backup Server Turbo NAS offers you the most complete backup solution with Apple Time Machine support, remote replication to an Rsync server, Windows client backup software NetBak Replicator, and third party backup software support, and so on. Remote Replication The data on the NAS can be backed up to or from another Turbo NAS or Rsync server over the network. Virtual Host Supported Web Server You can host multiple websites on Turbo NAS with the built-in web server and virtual host feature. The NAS supports PHP, MySQL, HTTPS connection, and SSL authentication. It is the ideal solution for you to create your own websites, e-shops, blogs, content management system (CMS), wiki, and so on. MySQL Server The NAS can be flexibly applied in various deployments such as a database server of another web server in remote site or as an additional backup database server. Printer Server The NAS supports network printer sharing function (max 3 USB printers). UPnP Media Server (with built-in TwonkyMedia Server) The NAS is a perfect media storage centre and it works well with UPnP media server. You can play the photos and videos on TV, or listen to your favourite music and Internet radio on your Hi-Fi System. Multimedia Station You can share you photos, video, or music over the network by the Multimedia Station of the NAS. Download Station The NAS supports PC-less BitTorrent, FTP, and HTTP download. TCP/ UDP, encrypted BT download function, and DHT (Distributed Hash Tables) are also supported. iTunes Server You can stream the mp3 music on the NAS to the computers on the home network and listen to the music by iTunes over wired or wireless network connection. Surveillance Station The Surveillance Station enables you to configure multiple IP-based security cameras simultaneously for real-time monitoring, recording, and playback. As you can see a Ness raid unit has some great features from a base price under $800.00 for a 2TB unit and maybe the way to go as a 2nd stage back up system Dentplex Hint :They are all great system and have the pro and cons as long as you back up your main data and have a system in place is what matters long term  Fill free to call us if you have any question.We are more then happy to help and point you in the right direction