Re: Back up routines
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 11:17:04AM -0400, Jeff Soules wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 11:08 AM, Eric
> > 1. Every day, bring this drive in, plug it in, run this program, then take it
> > home at night; or
> >
> > 2. Pay Amazon $3/mo and don't worry about it;
> >
> > and I bet over 80% of them choose #2. They'll say "The time it takes me to do
> > that for one week is worth more than $3, let alone for the whole month!". The
> > ones who choose #1 don't value their time enough, IMO.
>
> It depends on the amount of data you have. If you're a decent-sized
> small business with a lot of databases to back up and you're pushing
> 10 GB nightly, then it's more like $33/mo, assuming you never actually
> have to use the backup. If you have to *use* the backup, your restore
> process will be constrained to the speed of your internet connection,
> which could result in some very significant downtime which may or may
> not be acceptable for your business.
>
> Each way has advantages and disadvantages; there isn't a
> one-size-fits-all for this.
For sure. But I don't have anyone pushing 10 GB nightly :-) It's just that
people were telling me to go buy a hard drive for 150 MB/day, and I wanted to
point out that for many people that's ridiculous.
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 10:19:43AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> I worry about things the disappearance of which would destroy my
> business.
I trust Amazon more than a HD. You're free not to, but I've seen more HDs fail
than I have Amazons.
> Gah!!!
>
> Computers are for automation, not manual labor. Plug it in, click
> an icon, and go about your business. When it's done, unplug and
> bring home.
>
> That's 2 minutes of actual manual labor.
Which, if you multiply it out, is more than $3.
(2 minutes * $20/hour * ~20 days/month) / (60 minutes/hour) = $13.33
Uploading to a remote server is more automated (client doesn't even have to
*think* about it), and for low amounts of data, is cheaper.
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 05:29:56PM +0200, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
> I guess you're right in what small business owners are doing, but IMHO
> they are not valuing confidentiality of their data high enough. I
> don't know which encryption standards are in use, but I doubt most
> people even know about http://www.schneier.com/essay-198.html by Bruce
> Schneier, let alone understand what he is saying.
For the record, JungleDisk uses AES-256. My bigger worry with one client is
that they refuse to use good passwords, despite my best advice.
Oh, and I bet if I pointed out to them that the NSA might be able to get at
their data, they'd tell me "If the NSA wants it they can have it!"
It's mostly sales/accounting data. They probably wouldn't even care if their
competitors got it. :-)
> I say this being hit by a complete HW and data loss to a fire in '97.
> I prefer keeping my data off-site and off-net.
If off-net is a concern, then don't use Amazon. It's not a concern for me or
any of my clients.
Cheers,
--
Eric Gerlach, Network Administrator
Federation of Students
University of Waterloo
p: (519) 888-4567 x36329
e: egerlach@feds.uwaterloo.ca
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