School backups - cloud?

Orion

Today I've spent nearly 9k on new PCs and a 'server' (ok a high end PC with RAID1 drives) for a small primary school*. One thing I didn't buy - intentionally - was a backup solution as I'm considering backing up to the cloud. Reasoning is simple - I can't rely on teachers or the school secretary to bring home a dat drive or a dvd-ram every weekend. With the best of intentions they might forget one week and Murphy's law dictates that that would be the week the school burns down

Anyone got any experience with these kind of backups? I've done a quick google on it and found http://perfectbackup.ie but without independent references I'm hesitant about unknown companies.

The server will be running some flavour of Linux - which one I haven't decided yet but it'll probably be Ubuntu or a variant as it will purely be a file server and that's the setup I'm most familiar with. Rsync to an ISP is another option.

I appreciate all experiences or suggestions.

* It's the ICT budget - has to be spent on IT equipment so don't give me grief over not spending the money on books

Static M.e.

i'm currently trialing a solution from Savenet.ie on one of our sites that I find quite good.

So far I have nothing but good things to say about them. Cheap, effective and support is there when I need it, we will most likely be going ahead with it.

Give Susan a call and she can fill you in on the details.

(I have nothing to do with the company in any way)

Orion

I like to get recommendations but have reservations already:
1. www.savenet.ie works but savenet.ie doesnt - that's pretty basic to fix esp. for an online company
2. No prices on the website - could be good, could be bad.

mick.fr

Macros42 wrote: »

I like to get recommendations but have reservations already:
1. www.savenet.ie works but savenet.ie doesnt - that's pretty basic to fix esp. for an online company
2. No prices on the website - could be good, could be bad.

Looks like they heard you

itscout

Macros42 wrote: »

Today I've spent nearly 9k on new PCs and a 'server' (ok a high end PC with RAID1 drives) for a small primary school*. One thing I didn't buy - intentionally - was a backup solution as I'm considering backing up to the cloud. Reasoning is simple - I can't rely on teachers or the school secretary to bring home a dat drive or a dvd-ram every weekend. With the best of intentions they might forget one week and Murphy's law dictates that that would be the week the school burns down

Anyone got any experience with these kind of backups? I've done a quick google on it and found http://perfectbackup.ie but without independent references I'm hesitant about unknown companies.

The server will be running some flavour of Linux - which one I haven't decided yet but it'll probably be Ubuntu or a variant as it will purely be a file server and that's the setup I'm most familiar with. Rsync to an ISP is another option.

I appreciate all experiences or suggestions.

* It's the ICT budget - has to be spent on IT equipment so don't give me grief over not spending the money on books

If you're willing to spend some time fiddling with a few scripts, you may want to give Amazon's S3 service a try.
Prices are here. S3 itself is pretty low level (it simply stores chunks of data), so you need something on top of it to make it more manageable.
See this for a tutorial on setting up basic backups on top of S3.
--
IT Scout - www.jobscout.ie

itscout

itscout wrote: »

See this for a tutorial on setting up basic backups on top of S3.

The tutorial link is: http://blog.eberly.org/2006/10/09/how-automate-your-backup-to-amazon-s3-using-s3sync/

johnmd

If its only onsite backup that you need then a cheap NAS drive with the nightly SBS backup should see you ok.
If you want offsite and a handsfree approach for data level restore,
then the offsite providers are the way to go.
Cheap and effective,you just need a half decent DSL pipe.
I can recommend a few proiders to you if you need as well.

CCSL

If there is not a lot of changes to the data ie - just saved docs etc then online would be fine but if they have large databases ie - attendance exam results etc then there may be an issue. If you have 5gb or less
backit up free with mesh.com

Little trick you can use is to mirror a directory the school machine to an offsite machine without using the online storage then there is no limit to the space all you would need is a windows client pc with access to the files and your own machine at home to mirror the data to.. FREE!!:cool:

ro2

Do the Department of Education not have a centralised strategy for backups?

If it's left to each school, they must be wasting a fair amount of money.

Capt'n Midnight

ro2 wrote: »

Do the Department of Education not have a centralised strategy for backups?

If it's left to each school, they must be wasting a fair amount of money.

A lot of schools use satellite for internet

Orion

They don't have a centralised strategy - not at primary level anyway. Satellite broadband is only used if there is no fixed line or wireless solution available. All schools are getting broadband by the cheapest means - if satellite is the only option then that's what they get. Given that a lot of schools are in rural areas you're probably right Capt'n. But we have landline broadband.

I've been too busy to do much research on this but thanks for the options here so far

ED E

ro2 wrote: »

Do the Department of Education not have a centralised strategy for backups?

If it's left to each school, they must be wasting a fair amount of money.

If you consider that tech support for my old primary school consisted of a 12 year old pupil the majority of the time, the mention of online backups would just draw looks of confusion. They then networked all the machines(no two machines the same, all dated) but denied internet access making the network completely redundant as there was no need for file sharing between machines.

A big problem with school stuff(in second level) to is that the Admin will often change regularly, or the load may be shared, resulting in a very messy system.


Would it not be simplest to rent a basic file server of reasonable size and then schedule an imaging of the necessary drives/directories for twelve every night? From my novice eyes thats gonna be the most affordable solution.


This gets me thinking, is my current(2nd Level) school system externally backed up? Admin has never mentioned any:eek:

ro2

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

A lot of schools use satellite for internet

I was thinking more of the cost of licensing the software.

patftrears

Macros42 wrote: »

Today I've spent nearly 9k on new PCs and a 'server' (ok a high end PC with RAID1 drives) for a small primary school*. One thing I didn't buy - intentionally - was a backup solution as I'm considering backing up to the cloud. Reasoning is simple - I can't rely on teachers or the school secretary to bring home a dat drive or a dvd-ram every weekend. With the best of intentions they might forget one week and Murphy's law dictates that that would be the week the school burns down

Anyone got any experience with these kind of backups? I've done a quick google on it and found http://perfectbackup.ie but without independent references I'm hesitant about unknown companies.

The server will be running some flavour of Linux - which one I haven't decided yet but it'll probably be Ubuntu or a variant as it will purely be a file server and that's the setup I'm most familiar with. Rsync to an ISP is another option.

I appreciate all experiences or suggestions.

* It's the ICT budget - has to be spent on IT equipment so don't give me grief over not spending the money on books

I use http://www.drivehq.com/ set up the software to monitor a director and then forget about it.
Some of the Irish companies are really taking the mick with their prices.
You can get free online back-up for 2GB I was being charged €300 a year by Irish companies

Orion

I haven't neglected this thread. Thanks for all the tips so far. I haven't had time to look at this further yet but I'll be making a decision and implementing it this month.

Static M.e.

Dell are doing online backups for PC's and Laptops at the moment.

Might be worth checking out of your using Dell