daknetworks.com

Datacenter backups are tough. They have been killing me through the years. Why? Simply because there is too much data. Sure backuping up a desktop or a phone isn't too hard as the options are available but what do I do in a datacenter? What are my options?

Good question. What are my options? Well, lets think about it.

Typically, the fist option I think of is a backup to an external HD or a USB HD. On a desktop this easy, plug the USB HD into the desktop and off you go. In a datacenter, I can't plug in the USB. It's thousands of miles away. When I called one datacenter about this option, they said I would have to rent out another unit or another U. This is obviously expensive. Plus I would have to pay for USB drive and the time for a tech to work with me. That part shouldn't be too bad but you never know.

But if I'm going to pay for another U, I might as well have a second server to backup to.

Which leads to the second option, a second server. A second server wouldn't be too bad. There are many pros, it is available, I have control and I could use it in a pinch for something else if I needed and possibly exteriment with high availability items.

The issue with a second server is setup. The thought of having to setup a secure RSYNC is daunting to me. There's too many things that could go wrong and I wouldn't know it until they did go wrong. Items like my backup not working until I needed it.

The second issue with a second server is simply my pennywise roots. I'm not paying a full server setup simply for backup if I can get around it.

The third option is to backup to desktop. This simply won't work. There's simply too much data. I'm not downloading 500GB of info via web to a local desktop. Even if I did go down this path the major issue would be restoring it if I needed to. How would I get the data back to the rebuilt server? Wait days for it to transfer 500GB? It would be faster if I drove it there. I simply don't like it.

Luckily for me, my new awesome datacenter has a fourth option; NAS. Network attached storage. So basically it's an external HD that is accessible via LAN connection. Better yet, I can setup it up without their required intervention. I can just order it up via my control panel they provide and it is ready to go in a matter of 1 minute. Awesome. They automatically provide the NAS connection name, the share name, the username and the password.

But would it work? Well, they offer a free 20GB NAS for testing out. Huh? Are you kidding me? That's awesome.

So I type in the credentials on the backup panel, signal a manual backup and voila, it works. After all these years, a seemingly daunting and expensive task it boiled down to a literal 5 minute operation. Amazing.

Thank you to all the datacenter professionals and backup developers that made this possible.