Need some email/colo service -- recommedations?

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

> IMHO, tapes are just too expensive. Overall, I am switched almost
> exclusively to backups to disk/CD/DVD. Tapes may be an alternative if
> you already put the money down for a big auto-loader. But hard disks,
> which now drop below $1/GByte, are very attractive.

The small company where I installed a tape drive in November had started out
with an online backup service, outgrown that (costs too much per Gb/month),
and when I arrived they had an rsync script going just as you suggest.

If you can fit everything on a writeable DVD then it's a reasonable
solution--you get the ability to keep a full backup off-site by simply
swapping out the DVD once a week.

But that only holds 4.7Gb and won't scale much beyond that.  Rsync to a hard
drive only protects against accidental file erasure and only until the next
sync; it won't protect against fire or theft and it won't let you retrieve
something you accidentally deleted last month.  In fact I'm hard-pressed to
describe what problem rsync-to-nonremovable-media addresses, especially if I
make the assumption that file servers installed nowadays should *always* be
configured as RAID1 or RAID5.

As for the cost of tapes, I've been able to buy them off eBay for about $20
apiece for the 35Gb or 50Gb AIT backups.  Ten tapes gives you a 2.5-month
history of weekly full backups, for a reasonable $200 one-time cost (plus a
one-time cost of $150 or so for the drive).  I agree that if you buy them new
for $60 to $90 they are "too expensive", though still far less than you'd pay
for an outsourced solution of any sort over the long term.

-rich