Topic: Question about SME 7 and Tape back up..

[sodjazero]

I have a client that wants to host their own email server (SME).

They are wanting to have atleast a 1TB of storage space because emails are very important to them.

Second they are wanting a reliable backup process.

I am a little new to SME 7, I do host my own website and email from a SME 7 box from my house.

However i have not had the chances to explore backup processes with SME.

I do know there is a tape backup option by default installed on SME 7. Would i run into any issues using the SME 7 back up with 1TB disk space?

Thanks in advance!

[sodjazero]

33 views and no replys?

[Stefano]

I do know there is a tape backup option by default installed on SME 7. Would i run into any issues using the SME 7 back up with 1TB disk space?

as far as you have a tape drive that manage 1TB (maybe last generation of ultrium), I can't see any reason why it should not work.
BTW, backing up 1TB on a tape will require a quite long time.

HTH
Ciao
Stefano

[sodjazero]

Thanks for your input. I guess what i am looking for at this point is options...

Tape does not have to  be the main means of backup.

[idp_qbn]

I think a better solution, considering the volume of data, is to have a second SME server running AFFA as your backup system.

This box could be anywhere on your network, even over the internet if you can get them connected with a VPN (OpenVPN is a good system).

AFFA is a SME contrib and is very easy to set up. Just follow the directions.

Cheers
Ian

[janet]

idp_qbn

Affa will also only rsync the changed data every day, rather than the whole 1Tb.
http://wiki.contribs.org/Affa

The e-smith-backup with dar that is in smeupdates-testing repo is well advanced and also a worthy contender for backing up to a connected disk. It will do a weekly full and then daily incrementals.
http://wiki.contribs.org/Backup_with_dar

[Stefano]

I think a better solution, considering the volume of data, is to have a second SME server running AFFA as your backup system.

This box could be anywhere on your network, even over the internet if you can get them connected with a VPN (OpenVPN is a good system).

AFAIK Affa can run over the internet even out of vpn because it makes a shh connection

Ciao
Stefano

[sodjazero]

Thanks for the input guys! So far i like the DAR2 option.

I installed it on my home sme 7.x box and was able to complete a full backup and restore.

Keep the ideas coming! Other than using sme at home i have not used it in a production envirnment yet. ..

[tviles]

DAR2 and a large external USB shared drive on an extra desktop. No tapes.

[sodjazero]

Why wount a USB on the server work? Vs an external drive attatched to the server?

[tviles]

Because I'm a rookie at Linux and that was the easiest way I found to do my backups using DAR2. I could not figure out how to make the SME server see the USB drive that was plugged into the USB ports on the server. But DAR2 could see it easy on the desktop sitting next to it, once I shared the external USB drive out.

[mercyh]

I would agree with tviles. It seems that the USB does not always mount and unmount cleanly. If the Unmount does not happen correctly it leaves a directory on the local disk that looks like the USB drive and the backup happens there and looks like it completes correctly. 1 year later when you lose that drive you find that the USB drive is empty.

I personally am very wary of rotated USB drives attached directly to the server.

I will repeat my backup mantra.

-------use an SME developed backup solution---------
-------Check your backup reports daily---------------
-------Do test restores to make sure your solution is working------

[FreakWent]

"1TB of storage space because emails are very important to them."

Is this 1,000 users with 1Gb Mailboxes, all full, or 10 staff with 100Gb mailboxes each?

Perhaps ALL the emails have mid-size word docs, so each email is 500Mb.  That's storage for 200,000 emails.  Will the two hundred thousand word documents be read by an automatic system?

Just an observation, but if your client really does legitimately need a terabyte of storage for mail, it's pretty serious business, if that's the case then you should install more than one mail server for redundancy.