Bioinformatics Lab - Backup System Upgrade Ideas
From Bioinformatics.Org Wiki
Broadening our backup policy - ideas
- More offsite backups in different locations
- cost of hard drive plus network drive enclosure
- protects against loss of data due to any physical damage
- very effective, except makes backup system harder to maintain - must be used in proper balance with other methods
- Raiding offsite backups
- cost of hard drives
- protects offsite backups from faults
- cheaper than more offsite backups, but less effective at protecting from physical damage
- More frequent backups
- decreases the size of loss from any faults (i.e. hard drive faults)
- will require larger hard drives - or - will require deleting backups from the storage device much earlier so as to not overfill the backup drive
- this may not be an issue depending on the average size of backup, and if we use techniques like incremental backups to help the process.
- can be implemented with little to no change to current hardware
- Adding more drive to onsite RAID/time machine configuration
- cost of hard drives
- protects against immediate loss of work due to physical hard drive failure
- time machine protects against loss of data due to any accident (so long as the hard drive with the time machine itself is intact)
- Offsite time machine
- limits installation to CS network (at least until cat-6 cabling is installed)
- Mac proprietary system is very effective at preventing against data loss
- reasonably cost effective
- similar to more offsite backups
Questions about offsite backup
- What level of data integrity is appropriate/necessary?
- Do we have access to any other locations for offsite backup? (current locations are E2-537 and the Plant Science building)
- Can we integrate our storage or backup system somehow with IST?
- NOTE: we are already storing our external drive in Dave Trebble's office
- Are there any services on or off-campus that will provide additional data integrity?