http://tidbits.com/ ioSafe hard drives may be the safest destination for local backups, but Joe Kissell thinks you can get equally good security for a much lower price. en-us Copyright 2013 TidBITS Publishing Inc. Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 EST Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 EST editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) http://tidbits.com/images/tb_logo_152x55.png http://tidbits.com/ 55 152 TidBITS badge http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17660 Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:35:53 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17660 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17605 Fri, 08 Feb 2013 23:35:23 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17605
Media fireproof safes do exist, but are expensive.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17598 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:04:00 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17598
Thank you for the quick reply! It's always nice to see a CEO keep up with discussions such as these. I hope that continues as your company grows.

Some information that I should have included in the first post: The 40TB worth of data is currently in RAID 6 and is network accessible. Much of the data does need to stay this way though it may not always be accessed all the time. At any given moment we may need to grab something from a project that hasn't been touched in years. We have archives currently to free up space on the server on NAS devices in RAID as well, however their network speeds are unsatisfactory :/. These also need to be backed up. I thank you for the insight you have provided and prompt response and will definitely stay tuned.

Any other comments or suggestions are welcome from you, or anyone else who may have some helpful info.

Thanks again!]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17597 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:11:07 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17597
Robb Moore
CEO
ioSafe]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17596 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:09:39 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17596
Of course, pushing massive data over the WAN or using what I'd call "infinite incremental" backups have issues. Full, fresh, complete snapshots of the entire data volume are the safest but involve the most inefficient storage of data.

Be sure to test your backup plans periodically to make sure you're actually protecting the data and recovery is possible.

People regularly "think" they're backing up when in fact they're not able to perform a complete restore. The time to test your backup/DR strategy is NOT during a real crisis :)

-R]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17595 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:57:52 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17595 disks (RAID5) arrays! You'll need 3X 12disk arrays to do it properly. Not fun. Streaming that onto the WAN is of course impractical.

I'd recommend tiering or archiving the data as practical. Use an ioSafe N2 to image the server daily if possible for bare metal restore of the most current data.

We don't have any products that can backup 40TBs in one volume but we're constantly working on new products so stay tuned!

-Robb]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17593 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 15:30:13 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17593
I also disagree with the cloud solution as in our small business situation it would NEVER satisfy our requirements for a backup solution unless leaps and bounds of progress has been made in regards to bandwidth. We have 40+ TB worth of data currently and need a backup solution. From a brief overview of your products it seems the largest size solutions you offer are limited at 8 TB. Do you have other products that may be more suiting to our needs? If not, do you have plans to support such large amounts of data or other suggestions?

Joe, you make some excellent points as well feel free to chime in with some alternatives for our situation as it is a unique one.

Thanks,

R]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17592 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:31:19 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17592
Joe]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17591 Wed, 06 Feb 2013 12:28:44 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17591 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17563 Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:09:36 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17563 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17540 Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:15:37 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17540 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17509 Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:38:25 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17509 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17507 Sun, 03 Feb 2013 14:09:07 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17507 "Vulnerable" data can mean milliseconds to a company like Visa. For the rest of us, data might be considered vulnerable if not backed up for hours, days or weeks.

ioSafe is about putting our hardware in place when you like to reduce your vulnerability for terabytes of data and might not have the budget, time or expertise to protect the data in other ways.

-Robb]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17500 Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:07:12 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17500
Yeah, the insulation does indeed make them bigger than standard drives. We do, however, have a NAS option that connects to a router either via wire or wireless (with a dongle) and so can be located away from the workspace.

Have a great weekend!

Robb]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17487 Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:44:54 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17487
3. If my house was destroyed and I had 2.6TB in the cloud – how long do you think it would be to stream that back to me? Drag and drop a 500GB to the cloud. 1TB to the cloud. It's like sucking the Pacific Ocean through a straw. It's possible but not very interesting to watch. It’s faster to FedEx hard drives across the country than streaming online.

4. The majority of our data recoveries post disaster actually happen onsite and don’t involve any shipping at all. It's typically hours, maybe days to recover for most events. Some recoveries we can perform by talking to the person onsite or remote login to the person's computer. Most disasters are not the natural type – but the human type. Our Data Recovery Service covers everything – no questions asked.

The fact is that data growth exceeds bandwidth growth. Over the last decade and through the next decade I've had the same problem I have today – bandwidth.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17486 Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:43:55 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17486
I understand all your points and they’re generally well made. I’m a Mac user too so I have few comments directly related to your article. I have 2.6TBs at home so traditional cloud storage is simply not an option – both from a cost and speed perspective.

1. Swapping disks forces you to change your Time Machine target every time you swap drives. If you’re rotating media on/offsite once a day or week, this is a minor but persistent hassle every time you rotate the media. Just another thing in my busy life to remember. No thanks.

2. Humans are humans, rotating media on/offsite might save you $100 dollars short term, but what if disaster strikes while both media copies are onsite (in the middle of a rotation)? What if the disaster strikes 2 days after you’ve taken videos or pictures of my kid’s 1st birthday party and I’m on a weekly rotation?]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17495 Thu, 31 Jan 2013 23:21:16 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17495 http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17489 Wed, 30 Jan 2013 23:43:10 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17489
Thanks very much for your feedback. Obviously we're coming at this from different perspectives, and I can only offer my own impressions. Personally, I have a couple of terabytes or so in the cloud. Seeding (up or down) can speed up transfer when you need to move a lot of data in a hurry, but it's exceedingly rare for one to have to restore everything from the cloud, all at once. I also use one of several services that offer unlimited cloud backup storage for a small fixed fee, so I don't worry about cost or space.

As for Time Machine, it's not the smartest tool out there when it comes to rotating media, that's true, but in Mountain Lion you can set up multiple destinations and it will alternate automatically; that helps a lot.

My feeling is that no matter how good an ioSafe drive is, it doesn't eliminate the need for offsite backups—that's playing with fire (so to speak). So there's always going to be some sort of cost involved, but that can be realized in different ways.

I do take your point about some types of data recovery being much speedier and available remotely; thanks very much for pointing that out!

Joe]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17488 Wed, 30 Jan 2013 20:47:11 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17488
ioSafe is definitely not the only solution out there. Depending on your data storage, recovery, speed and compliance needs, ioSafe is meant to be layered into whatever works for you to help reduce the vulnerability of data loss. You can use it with or without any cloud/offsite vaulting strategies you happen to like.

If you have 20-30 GB of data and can use a straight cloud solution, you’re not an ioSafe candidate. If you have terabytes of vulnerable data, precious video, pictures or critical business data, you may be interested in incorporating ioSafe into your data protection strategy to help minimize risk.

There’s no other way I know of to get up to the second, plug and play, disaster protection for terabytes of data for so little cost.

Thanks for the write-up and being a part of the discussion.

Robb Moore

CEO

ioSafe]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/13529?rss#comments_17483 Wed, 30 Jan 2013 17:38:10 EST http://tidbits.com/article/13529#comments_17483