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Off-site Storage

By: George Lange

Once you have organized the media that you are storing on-site, it's time to consider off-site storage. There are two ways to store your data off-site:
• The typical method of sending copies of your volumes to someone
• Real-time off-site storage

The latter is more expensive but is much easier to use during a disaster. That is, of course, what off-site storage is meant to prepare you for—the destruction of your media and/or the building that holds it. If you have a complete set of backups in another location, you would be able to recover from even the worst local disaster.

Choosing a media vaulting vendor

Choosing a media vaulting vendor is an important a task as choosing your backup software. Choosing the wrong vendor can be disastrous. You depend on that vendor as your last line of defence, which is why you are paying them. Therefore, their storage and filing procedures need to be above reproach. Their movement-tracking procedure must be free of holes. Here is a list of things to consider when choosing an off-site storage vendor:

Individual media accountability

The first media vaulting vendor I ever used stored all of my volumes inside cases. They never inventoried the individual pieces of media. It was up to me to know which volume was in which case. When I needed a volume from one of the cases, they had to go in and get it. Once that was done, there was no log of where that volume actually existed. This is reffered to as container vaulting. Most media vaulting companies also offer individual media vaulting. This method ensures that every volume is being tracked.

Bar-coded, location-based inventory
Again each volume should have a bar code that allows your storage vendor to scan every volume in and out. They should scan volumes into their vault when they arrive and scan them out when they give them back to you.

Electronic double check

If you are keeping track of every volume's location, and your vendor is too, you should double-check each other. One or both of you can print out an export of your database that shows volume locations. You can write a program that cross checks the location of every volume against the other inventory. I can't tell you how many times such a program has saved me. It's great to find an error when it happen, instead of weeks later when you need a volume that got misplaced.

Testing your chosen vendor

See if your vendor is on their toes. One tricky thing you can do is to see if they leave you alone in the vault. You are a customer of this company, so ask them if you can do an inventory of your media alone. See if they allow you unrestricted access to the inside of the vault. If they leave you alone inside the vault with no supervision, you have access to other companies' media. That means that at certain times, other companies may have access to your media. Run, don't walk, away from this company.

Make surprise inspections. Make spot checks. Ask for random volumes back, and see how quickly they can find them. Ask for volumes you just sent them. Volumes in the process of being inventoried are the hardest to find, but they should be able to do it. If you regularly send them five volumes a day with an inventory, put four volumes in one day, but list five on the inventory. See if they notice. If they don't, raise a ruck's! Their procedures should protect you from these types of human errors. If they don't, these procedures need to be improved. Be unpredictable. If you become predictable, you may be overlooked. Keeping them on their toes will make them remember you - and how important you think your volumes are. (By the way, your ability to make surprise inspections and spot checks should be spelled out in your contract. Make sure that it is OK for you to do this. If it is not...well, you know what to do)

Vendors store two types of volumes: Those that rotate in and and those that stay there indefinitely. As you rotate the cyclical volumes in and out, they are inventoried. Your archive volumes are another story. If a volume has been there for two years and has never been touched, how do you know that it's OK? You should make a full inventory of those volumes at least once, preferably twice, every year.

Electronic vaulting

Electronic vaulting is becoming quite popular. It can be expensive, but it's a beautiful thing. If you can afford it, I highly recommend it. The premise is that your backups are sent directly to a storage system at the electronic vaulting vendor. One question you need to ask yourself is, "What happens if they burn to the ground?" All your data could be lost. Don't let this happen. Make sure that this storage company is not the only location for your backed-up data. In addition, make sure that you know how you're going to do a large restore. While a small network link may be large enough to do a continuous incremental backup, it's probably not large enough to do a 100 GB restore. If this is a concern, ask your electronic vaulting vendor about a local recovery appliance.

Article Source: http://freearticletrove.com

Backup Data Offsite is an online provider of offsite data backup solutions and you can use the services of them to store data offsite.

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