[Techtalk] seeking backup solution recommendations

[Meryll Larkin]

Hi Systers,

 

I'm searching online too, but I thought emailing this list might help me as
some of you probably have experience with different backup solutions.

 

The environment that I am backing up has the following features:

1.      Only Linux servers in the LAN- no other OS.

2.      Only ONE DIRECTORY really requires backup.  That directory is 140 T
in size, but currently contains 25 T of data.  That could double over the
next 4 years, not sooner.

3.      Some of the files in that one directory are 20G in size, and they
could get larger.

4.      We have a tape drive - which we have been using to make backups
using "tar".  That has reached its useful limit with those large files.
The tapes hold about 12T of uncompressed data, each.  We have several tapes.
We have never gotten the "Autoloader" feature to work on the tape drive, but
we can move the tapes manually, remotely.  I'm smart about selecting pieces
to backup that fit on each tape.

5.      We have an internal DNS server for the LAN only, I mention this
because I remember a decade ago some backup solutions needed to use server
names and have reverse lookup.  We can do that.

6.      We don't currently have email going in or out of the LAN.  The email
sits in /var/spool/mail.  So what that means is that if there is a GUI
dashboard, the GUI will need to display errors.  It would be helpful to be
able to see errors some way OTHER than email notifications.  Okay if I need
to use command line to pull them.

7.      This is ALSO our backup and recovery plan so it is IMPORTANT that
Restores can be done from storage media EVEN IF the original server that
created the backup is destroyed.  In other words, I need to be able to make
a new server, install the backup software, and restore to new hardware.  

I'm mentioning this because I think SOME encryption algorithms prevent the
ability to restore from non-original backup software install.

        I manually retrieve tapes with backups on them so they can be stored
off-site.

8.      Nice to have:  Speed at backing up - because folks using the
resources don't like to have their processes slowed nor access denied for
very long.

9.      Nice to have: Granular Restores

 

Suggestions?  Ideas?

I'd like to hear about BOTH solutions that FIT my criteria AND if you know
solutions that DON'T (so I don't waste my time in my online research).

 

TIA,

Meryll Larkin