The major concerns for my customers are theft of equipment and/or fire. In both
cases the device to restore the data has gone and no new devices are available.
Offsite. Any method, any transport, any mechanism... just offsite.
2) The point about proprietary hardware is very relevant. In general I will
be thinking very carefully before specifying any backup solution in the future.
Not just proprietary hardware but technical obsolescence - particularly in the
long term. My magneto-optical (MO) discs were superb. However I burnt out
half a dozen drives (the electronics, nothing mechanical) in fewer years.
Shelves full of (probably) perfect MO discs here ~ nothing to run 'em in.
Pick something VERY "broad". My ancient CDRs are still readable, peer
CDRWs rather less so. Ditto DVDRs even the early 2x iterations read.
A few years back I'd put my expectation into Blu-ray (BD), particularly
the 50GB stuff, but I'm still waiting as BD just not taking off in the
right way. In a decade the current flavours of USB connections may
not be favoured or even technically supported, so consider expected
lifetimes of the actual technology! For massive backups, my usual kind,
I'm considering a shelf full of redundant arrays of inexpensive drives.
No, not RAID, but actual shelves of drives each used like books and
slotted into a workshop bare drive toaster-like slot device. Choosing
the formatted OS is going to be tricky.
3) I looked at ebay and the price of tape hardware is relatively high.
e.g. the backup device is as expensive as the basic server. Is it better
to buy new or are these devices reliable enough to go 2nd user?
Tape is for corporates ie those who can afford them and for those to whom
that feature set is appropriate. Tape transports are intricate, heads wear out,
tape has all sorts of intrinsic issues. Having said that I used to use tapes in
the last millennium and relied utterly on their effectiveness. Various issues
became insurmountable (cost, data transfer rate, media supply) and that
technology was regretfully dropped. Still have two transports, one from the
early 90s but driver card, supported bus technology and fashion has moved on...
I already use on-site "off-site" backup i.e. installing a NAS device in another office on
the trading estate maybe I should be looking to do this more.
Yes, offsite, with multiple iterations of NAS.
AFFA is excellent, I used to use it intensely, but is it still being maintained?