What's a good internet-based method for church backups?
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I missed World Backup Day by a bit, but it's always a good day to talk about backups. I'm looking to setup backups for two very different churches: one is a traditional, small town church and the other is a very budget-conscience inner city church. Any backup solution needs to be drop-dead simple, both for the end users and the admin. Clearly free or cheap is also a must for the inner city church. I'm still wading through options like Mozy, Crashplan, Dropbox, etc. I was wondering if anyone else had practical experience with putting an internet-based solution (as opposed to tape backups) into place. What did you end up doing? Why? How much does it cost?
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Kyle, Are these server based systems?
Ken
[quote=Kyle Adams]
Clearly free or cheap is also a must for the inner city church. I'm still wading through options like Mozy, Crashplan, Dropbox, etc.
[/quote]
Mozy is good but it's going to have a continued cost every month. I'd avoid dropbox for churches because it requires the user to actively select which files will be backed up... that'll most likely mean that very little or nothing actually gets backed up in my experience. If you're considering Crashplan, why not consider Amanda, it's open source (http://amanda.zmanda.com/)? I think I'd probably go that route, get a cheap server to throw in the church and use Amanda for automatic backup. Then you're not having to deal with regular payments, just a one time hit, maybe even convert an older computer into a linux server to handle the backups. The software isn't dead simple, but you can set it and forget it.
Does anyone have a Standard Operating Procedure for church backups?
What should be backed up
What should not be backed up
Off site
On site
Kevin Sigler
Fairfield Christian Reformed Church
Fairfiled California
In god we trust. AMIN!
As a network Admin, the more you backup the better. Windows 7 has a great backup solution built in. I would suggest purchasing a 2 bay NAS (Network Attached Storage) which supports hot swap mirroring. Then I would use 3 hard drives, leave one drive in the system and swap the second and third disk weekly taking it off site. When it comes to recovery, (and it will) the restore will be fast. Other than that I use google docs as another form of backup and moving files around.
Thanks for all the input, everyone, and keep it coming! There's also some information and links to resources in the Church & Web blog, "Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered By Backups."
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