Offsite backup

[Curtis Vaughan <curtis@npc-usa.com>]

I was wondering what options there are for maintaining offsite backups?

The most feasible way I can imagine (maybe not the most practical) is to 
basically tarball everything necessary and then secure copy it to the 
offsite server.

However, whereas I use taper to backup servers, I was wondering whether 
it is possible to do the following. After backup is complete, would it 
be possible to somehow then copy all data that was just backed up onto 
tape media to an offsite server?  I'm not sure how that would work at 
all, but that would be great for consistency (i.e., the backup on tape 
is the same as the backup off site).

Keep in mind that I do not wish to purchase any backup software, btw.

Thanks for any input.

Curtis