<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>This may or may not be of use to you, but what I do for the libraries I work with is provide a free-of charge, best-effort, no guarantee offsite backup to my own backup server. I do this because...well...generally, my libraries suck at it. LOL! And this way I can be sure that they're getting regular and reliable backups! Years ago, I used to have local on-site backup strategies in place at each library, but inevitably, the responsibility would fall upon a local staff member with the most technical inclination. At some point, the backup would fail and the person in charge wouldn't know enough to recognize that a failure had occurred. Fast forward to today, and the level of reliable local expertise (WRT backups) in my small libraries hasn't really increased all that much (with a few pockets of exception here and there). So to help reduce the cost each library incurs to set up their own backup strategy (regardless of off- or on-site) and to ensure that everyone is getting regular backups in a way that I could easily monitor/manage and feel confident in, I started handling them myself. No charge because while I do put a fair bit of time/effort/money into running the backups, I'm no 99.999% guaranteed up-time secure data center and I don't want to be in the position of implying any sort of service-level guarantee. But I sleep better at night knowing that everyone is getting regular backups of their critical data.</div><div><br></div><div>So...To keep my own costs as low as possible, I scrounged around the InterWebs to eval some FOSS backup software options. There are several well-used and well-featured backup options. This was several years ago and at the time I wasn't a stranger to linux, but wasn't (still not) a linux guru. I was hoping to find something cross platform and with a low barrier to entry. Some of the more robust software out there is commercial grade and very flexible/robust, but has a higher learning curve than I was looking for. Ultimately, I found and starting using UrBackup (<a href="https://www.urbackup.org">https://www.urbackup.org</a>): Low learning curve, runs the back-end on either Windows or Linux, has Windows and linux agents, does full hard drive image backups (on Windows targets only) as well as file backups, and is sufficiently powerful enough to do everything I need it to do to handle multiple different libraries over the Internet (via a VPN, in my use-case). It's reliable, well-supported, actively developed, and generally does a good job.</div><div><br></div><div>The moral of the story is: If you're a multi-branch library, you might be able to set up a backup server using some decommissioned hardware (and some new/larger storage) and FOSS backup software at a branch or two and run your own off-site backups without the ongoing expense of contracting a 3rd-party backup vendor. As with everything though, there are pros and cons to DIY backups. It works for me, but it may not work out or be cost effective for you. That's for you to decide!</div><div><br></div><div>(I was going to stop there, but I'll toss in this extra tidbit after re-reading your OP:)</div><div>I'm in the process of re-jiggering by back-end storage, so needed to purge old data, but at the moment, I'm storing about two months worth of backups for about 32 servers. After the re-jiggering, though, I expect to just let it pile up and should be able to pretty easily handle quite a few years' worth of data for all the target servers. I currently run nightly file backups to grab any file that has changed on any hard drive in the target device. Every 14 days, I grab an image-level backup of just the boot hard drive on Windows targets. Both backup types are smart enough to only send changed data over the wire and the server is smart enough to index/hash the changed data and not store redundant data. The file backups ensure that I can easily restore individual files/directories and the image backups allow me to restore a failed target computer from bare metal and get the OS back up and running quickly, following up by a file-level restore of the data volumes. I can pull individual files from the image backups too, so I'm actually getting redundant backups of some of the targets in some cases. (But that's ok; safety nets are a good thing, IMO!)</div><div><br></div><div>HTH and good luck,<br></div><div>Chad</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><br clear="all"><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>______________________________<br><b>Chad Neeper</b><br><font size="1">Senior Systems Engineer</font><br><br><b>Level 9 Networks</b><br><font size="1">740-548-8070 (voice)<br>866-214-6607 (fax)</font><br><br><font size="1"><i>Full IT/Computer consulting services -- Specialized in libraries and schools</i></font><br></div></div></div></div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 10:30 AM Fred Miller Jr via OPLINTECH <<a href="mailto:oplintech@lists.oplin.org">oplintech@lists.oplin.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt">Good Morning Everyone,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt">Was wondering what other library systems are using for their offsite backups? We were moving our offsite backups to USB drives and then switching them out every week. We have looked at trial cloud software
with a 14 day retention and I feel $67 a month can add up very quickly over time. Maybe I’m wrong and that’s on the cheaper side.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt">We’re using a FreeNas Mini 2.0 NAS storage box for our disaster recovery backup currently. Our offsite backups size is relatively small and it’s just for our File Server and SQL Server.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt">Comments or suggestions are appreciated.
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:12pt;color:rgb(38,38,38)">Fred Miller Jr<u></u><u></u></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12pt">IT Service Manager<u></u><u></u></span></p>
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</span>|<b><span style="color:rgb(102,154,102)"> E</span></b>: <u><span style="color:rgb(26,86,137)"><a href="mailto:fmiller@auglaizelibraries.org" target="_blank">fmiller@auglaizelibraries.org</a></span><span style="color:rgb(0,112,192)"><u></u><u></u></span></u></span></p>
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