How to backup live data to HOT SWAP DRIVES on live server ?

[garry_m]

How to backup live data to HOT SWAP DRIVES on live server ?
We are having a dell poweredge 2800 server with 5 drives plugged in. ( 2 drives - RAID 1,  3 drives - RAID 5 )
I wanted to have this backup solution:

Can we plug in 5 more drives in the server and have the data backup to the spare 5 drives regularly. So I can take the drives (5 backup drives ) offsite every night.  I wanted to buy a spare 2800 poweredge server and incase the server goes down, I wanted to plug the 5 backup drives in the spare poweredge 2800 server. Can this be done ?

Any ideas

Garry

[shirmal]

hi garry,

If you were buying a spare server why not cluster the servers? You could swap the drives out everynight assuming teh server can hotswap them.  I think your better off buying a tape drive for the expense of the 5 drive and risk using them

---Cheers

shirmal

[garry_m]

 OK, I can't leave my spare server in the same room(sorry but trying to take no chances of someone breaking in and stealing the serves as well).

Can you eloborate on the clustering, do we need both the primary and the spare server to be onsite to do it ?
Thanks for you reply

Garry

[shirmal · Accepted solution]

You have a couple of option.  You could use BE CPS to replicate the server data to a remote location over a WAN link to the other server.  If you cant leave the server in same room then clustering is out of the question

Hope this helps

---Cheers

shirmal

[teiva-boy]

Hot swap HDD's, are NOT made for constant swapping.  It's a cool feature, but not one made for longevity of constant swapping.  Please get over this notion first.  It will save you down the road.

If you are looking for disk based storage, perhaps look at BackupExec System Recovery instead.  It can handle physical drive removal much better.
Then look at using a USB or NAS type storage as your backup target.  These can be plugged in and out much more reliably than hotswap drives.  ANd System Recovery wont default to "off-line," like BE does.