online backup vs offsite backup

[Big Jim]

My Home NAS which has currently about 6TB of 10TB in use, needs a backup solution.

I have really 2 options (I think)
I can pay $9.99 a month (about £95 a year) for crashplan online backup which will take around 6 months, and probably about the same to recover the data should the worst happen.
or
I could buy a single 8 - 10TB HDD and install it in the server at my business premises.
I could do the initial backup locally, which wouldn't take so long, then transfer the drive to my business Server, and should the worst happen I would have the drive and data available straight away.
Obviously the data wouldn't have any parity so I would be relying on the drive being "in good condition" if I needed it. and the cost for that is around £200 - £300, so about 3 years worth of online backup.

most data isn't critical, but would be a huge inconvenience if lost, any critical/important data is already backed up to google drive, and my business server backs up to home NAS RAID array every night anyway.

What should I do ?

 

[Kitten Kong]

I'd opt for off site backup with a UK company.

one preferably which will allow you to do a seed backup. though with the amount you have requiring backup, even that will take some time to do.

I use a uk co called databunker.

inbox me if you want further info. I cant discuss price on here. but they are good.

 

[nerd2u]

Call up the provider and see if they will let you ship a drive with the data on it to them and upload it to their servers locally for you.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[brandonkick]

Online backup with the ability to send in a seed drive is probably your best bet. Keep in mind though, in the event of a total failure your going to need to deal with the fact that it would take 6 months to pull the data back down, unless they are willing to send you a copy of the data via a drive to you for you to reimport locally... like a reverse seeding process.

If that doesn't work, you can always build another home NAS that only gets turned on once a week for updating. You've said all critical data is already being backed up via google drive. I'd probably opt for another additional option as well, like maybe one drive. For all the none critical data, I'd say your options are a home grown NAS that is kept offline most of the time, or an online option like crashplan that offers you the ability to send and hopefully receive seed disks through the mail.

 

[Kitten Kong]

Online backup with the ability to send in a seed drive is probably your best bet. Keep in mind though, in the event of a total failure your going to need to deal with the fact that it would take 6 months to pull the data back down, unless they are willing to send you a copy of the data via a drive to you for you to reimport locally... like a reverse seeding process.

I can confirm that Databunker DO and WILL send out a 'reverse' seed drive for you.

I had to do this for a dental client of mine earlier in the year, after they suffered a syskey attack on their server.

 

[brandonkick]

I can confirm that Databunker DO and WILL send out a 'reverse' seed drive for you.

I had to do this for a dental client of mine earlier in the year, after they suffered a syskey attack on their server.

Sounds like the way to go

 

[Big Jim]

Everyone seems to suggest the online option vs running my own backup offsite (ie at the business premises)
is it just because there is no parity drive ? or just that online is better in some way ?

 

[GTP]

What's up with having multiple options?
Find a competent "cloud" backup service and have your own "on premise" backup.
You cant have too many backups. Can you?

 

[nerd2u]

Regardless of how many you have be sure to test your recovery of your backups.

Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk

 

[GTP]

Yes.

We used to have a client who insisted against our firm advice on keeping their ~100GB of data (mostly photographs and videos) on each of their two computers, both with ~120GB of non-expandable storage. (Early Ultrabooks - a triumph of style over substance). These were not synchronized in any way, partly because of trust issues but mostly because they travelled a lot and were often out of Internet range. Internet over mobile phone wasn't an option for reasons of expense, inconvenience, and they just didn't like it. Because they were travelling they had to have a non-cloud backup in the form of a series of portable USB hard drives. Data would occasionally be manually copied from each computer onto one or more of these drives (usually into a new folder), then copied from there onto the other computer. Then they'd do more-or-less the same thing in reverse. Every time a backup drive became full they'd label it and buy another.

This mostly worked until one of the computers became full, at which point only some of the shared data would be held on it and the rest would be on one (or more) of the portable drives. I think they had six of these at the peak of the madness, but it might have been more. The most important files were also emailed back and forth to make sure that they were in two or three not-quite-duplicated PST files on both computers as well. This all had to happen over POP because they were sometimes out of Internet range and "needed" immediate access to everything from either computer, even though they couldn't be synchronized. They also needed to be able to send and receive email without an Internet or mobile phone connection. That was a hard conversation.

Then the second computer became full and they asked for advice on how to move some of the data onto a seventh external drive and copy it to some of the other drives for backup. No other solution was even to be contemplated, and merging or eliminating duplicate data from the older drives was out of the question.

That's the point at which we indicated a reluctance to continue and politely suggested that perhaps someone else would be better able to serve them.

 

[brandonkick]

Everyone seems to suggest the online option vs running my own backup offsite (ie at the business premises)
is it just because there is no parity drive ? or just that online is better in some way ?

Typically if it is a "data protection" business that is serious about what they do and are even close to worth their salt... they have done what you need already (to an extent that you will probably not do it) and offer a nice online method of getting / putting data into their backup system.

Their data centers are monitored by pros 24 x 7. They have proper redundancy in place. They most likely have reliable methods for dealing with power outages, so that the machines that house your data are never going offline abruptly. These data centers are climate controlled, humidity, temperature, and so on. They regularly replace disks. They order disks in a way that they can mix and match batches, to eliminate the possibility of a single spindle having more than one disk out of a perhaps flawed batch. Checks, double checks, and triple checks. High security, lessening the chance that someone is going to run off with a server.

It's not that you can't do it. It's just that they will likely do it better.


If you really are happy that your critical data is protected, via storage on the machine that consumes it, the online backup, and perhaps yet a third backup device... then rolling your own solution for the "nice to not lose data" is perfectly fine. But a nice NAS with a proper RAID array isn't the end of the journey. You still need something in place for when disaster strikes that unit as well. It's a lot less likely to fail for various reasons, but it can still fail.

 

[Alexey]

Their data centers are monitored by pros 24 x 7. They have proper redundancy in place. ...
Checks, double checks, and triple checks. High security, lessening the chance that someone is going to run off with a server.

How often do you think they are on the market looking for data recovery solution for some often-bizzare custom-made storage system?

 

[brandonkick]

How often do you think they are on the market looking for data recovery solution for some often-bizzare custom-made storage system?

How often do I think a "crashplan" style service is shopping around for data recovery. I think that correlates directly with how professional they are and how good of a job they do? I would expect the major players to need data recovery services fairly infrequently. I'm sure even the best does at times, but the better their setup is architected, the less of a need I think they would have for data recovery services.


EDIT:

Of course, the math of it all suggests that as they number of drives / spindles they have running goes up... so do the odds of failure. So it might seem like they may be needing data recovery "often"... but when you look at it in terms of the amount of disks or arrays failing / needing recovered to the amount of disks or arrays up and running and healthy... I would think it's quite small.

 

[Big Jim]

Typically if it is a "data protection" business that is serious about what they do and are even close to worth their salt... they have done what you need already (to an extent that you will probably not do it) and offer a nice online method of getting / putting data into their backup system.

Their data centers are monitored by pros 24 x 7. They have proper redundancy in place. They most likely have reliable methods for dealing with power outages, so that the machines that house your data are never going offline abruptly. These data centers are climate controlled, humidity, temperature, and so on. They regularly replace disks. They order disks in a way that they can mix and match batches, to eliminate the possibility of a single spindle having more than one disk out of a perhaps flawed batch. Checks, double checks, and triple checks. High security, lessening the chance that someone is going to run off with a server.

It's not that you can't do it. It's just that they will likely do it better.


If you really are happy that your critical data is protected, via storage on the machine that consumes it, the online backup, and perhaps yet a third backup device... then rolling your own solution for the "nice to not lose data" is perfectly fine. But a nice NAS with a proper RAID array isn't the end of the journey. You still need something in place for when disaster strikes that unit as well. It's a lot less likely to fail for various reasons, but it can still fail.

I think you have misunderstood slightly.
1 critical data will be online no matter what
2 my backup solution is not the same machine, I want to backup my home NAS, my solution is to house a drive in my business premises server.

I understand that the data will be more secure with online backup but it is so slow that was my reasoning behind considering running my own cloud backup, I could always upgrade to a second drive in the future and run RAID1.

 

[Alexey]

RAID1 is not a backup. A ransomware virus will encrypt both copies simultaneuously, and accidental deletion will delete both copies simultaneously. The backup requires some kind of versioning, that is, the ability to go back in time, and RAID1 does not have that.

 

[Big Jim]

RAID1 is not a backup. A ransomware virus will encrypt both copies simultaneuously, and accidental deletion will delete both copies simultaneously. The backup requires some kind of versioning, that is, the ability to go back in time, and RAID1 does not have that.

I meant I could upgrade to RAID1 at the backup end. So that the backup is protected against drive failure.

 

[Alexey]

So that the backup is protected against drive failure.

Ah that's sure good. Sorry I did not catch that.

 

[johnrobert]

I have been looking into this and tried nearly every cloud backup for my Qnap NAS
could not get any of them to work and when I asked for help they either did not reply or where useless
I have spent countless non-billable hours, I hate to leave something not done
Can't understand why it takes 6 months for a backup or restore
I can D/L Win 10 Iso in about 15 minutes.

Thinking about doing a local USB backup, but would prefer an offsite backup

 

[brandonkick]

I think you have misunderstood slightly.
1 critical data will be online no matter what
2 my backup solution is not the same machine, I want to backup my home NAS, my solution is to house a drive in my business premises server.

I understand that the data will be more secure with online backup but it is so slow that was my reasoning behind considering running my own cloud backup, I could always upgrade to a second drive in the future and run RAID1.

I know it's not the same machine, the point was often a professional datacenter will likely have things in place that you do not, even at your business. Maybe you do have most of those things I've talked about, I don't know.

It's perfectly fine to put the backup copies on a drive in your server. But you have to think about how that disk may fail and you might lose that data. It would take failures on both ends, at the same time, but always plan for the worst and hope for the best. RAID 1 protects against a disk failure of n-1 where n is the number of disks in the array. Good protection, especially if you have more than two disks and they aren't all of the same type / batch. But still there are ways for all disks to die at once. You have to worry about crypto / malware.


The TL;DR is that having your backup at your business server is fine. Just be sure that you are comfortable with the level of protection and redundancy.

 

[ComputerRepairTech]

I have been looking into this and tried nearly every cloud backup for my Qnap NAS
could not get any of them to work

Back when amazon cloud backup was unlimited I was just using good sync on a windows vm that ran on the NAS then used the virtual switch feature to access the nas drives via network. I never liked the qnap backup app but I havent tried it in years.