Raid vs Offsite Options

[nibb]

What are the pros and cons you see on one or other backup method.

Some people prefer Raid Disks for backups, other to backup to an external server with CDP or Acronis or something else.

Someone people use only RAID configs for backups other only offsite backup.

Whats the main advantages of one system over the other. It would be nice so see some opinions. I still prefer offsite backups myself to avoid data corruption.

[mmyers]

nibb,

I presume that you mean to compare local backups vs. remote backups? RAID arrays are generally used to provide a reliable means of storage, whether that storage is for backups, live data, archived data, or anything else.

The biggest advantage to a remote backup solution is that you can easily backup multiple machines to a single server. Since that server is dedicated to backups, it would generally have a large volume available and plenty of resources to handle multiple backups simultaneously. When you backup data locally, this can be a huge problem if a drive were to fail.

The only downside to network backup is really only that its a slower process. Also, generally for security, the data is also encrypted. This encryption process can slow down the backup and also consumes resources. However, as long as backups are done during windows of low usage for the server then this wouldn't be a problem.

[Tomy Durden]

I generally do not recommend using RAID as a replacement for backups, rather than a mitigation for hardware failure. RAID doesn't cover any soft issues, such as compromise, accidental deletions, FS corruption, etc.

Both technologies should be used to supplement each other.

[nibb]

Yes that is why I dont use RAID. Most failures are data corruption not hard disk crashes.

But still why do so many just relay on RAID backups? I do servers backups via network a i can restore bit by bit even full OS in minutes.

I still dont understand how they handle the corruption of system. A raid system would just replicate the data that is corrupted to the second disk or they config the raid system on way i did not discovered.

[mmyers]

RAID devices are typically just used for storage and not so much for backups. Although they can be used to store backups. RAID's biggest advantage is that you can have a volume in tact if drives fail, although this does nothing to prevent data corruption within the filesystem on top of the RAID.

Really, there is only so much you can do to prevent corruption. Thats why its best to have backups of anything critical, so in the event it becomes corrupted you can just restore it.

[dynamicnet]

Greetings:

RAID is not backup!

We recommend hardware RAID for quick recovery from hard drive crashes; but you also need a good backup system.

Thank you.