vbedceo — Fri, 12 Nov 1999 03:43:00 +0000

Actually, I was asking this question for ones who have their dedicated server hosted remotely (do not have physical access to the servers).

Paying for the host to swap, recycle, and keep storage of backup tapes could cost another (at least) $100/month, depending on how often you want to do it.

That's why I posted this question. Would it be good enough for small(-medium) businesses (bandwidth in/out of the servers is around 20-30 GB) to have just RAID?

With RAID, if somehow your primary hard drive fails, the second will kick in right away and your websites stay up. This will give you less headache than if you would go with the "tape backup" option.

With tape backup, yes it's really really nice to have. But when the primary hard drive fails, your site will be down for quite a while since you would need to request the host to put the most recent tape into the tape drive, then you'd need to recover data, copy into a new hard drive, etc...

In this case (server hosted remotely AND tight budget!), would having RAID be good enough and better than having the tape backup option?

Thanks! .. Any experience, or suggestion would really be appreciated

JP Stones — Fri, 12 Nov 1999 03:17:00 +0000

RAID?
JP

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DebS — Fri, 12 Nov 1999 01:24:00 +0000

Tape backup, for two reasons: multiple generations of backups, and offsite storage of backups. I'm assuming it's your own server to which you have physical access.

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vbedceo — Thu, 11 Nov 1999 18:25:00 +0000

For a small-medium business, would having RAID system be good enough to maintain the server? Do we really need to have "tape backup" in place too? I do understand that it would be perfect to have both for your server for extreme redundancy and reliability.

But I guess my question is if the budget was so tight, which way would(should) you go if we were to pick just one, either RAID or TAPE BACKUP?

I will enjoy reading your reasoning