Where and with what should I be looking for a good hardware backup tool?

Question

Until now, I was doing my SQL Backups using USB Hard disk, and copying that to my local computer. After that, I went zipping and burning onto DVDs.

Now I want to push that on more professional and more robust level.

What kind of hardware is best for storing and backuping SQL databases ?

My environment looks like:

• two MS-SQL-Server 2008, One production database and other replicated for reporting
• My apps is not mission critical and I can afford my self down time even and for 20 hours.
• My main database is around 32GB when is in backup, others is around 10GB.
• I think that I do not need large and long historical data, two or tree snapshots should be OK for me.

Here are further questions:

• Should I looking for hardware with TAPES?
• Does NAS (network attached storage) provide a good solution ?
• If I go with NAS beside RAID, to what should I pay more attention?
• Which protocol is essential for NAS so SQL can do backups easily?
• Today's SHOHO NAS servers is pretty cheap and available, Should I avoid them ?

Any other suggestions is much appreciated.

Answer 1

My opinion: A NAS with RAID 5 would be a good solution. This would give you decent fault tolerance without costing too much space. You can even get NASes that support AD authentication, thereby taking your security up one level. This will take care of your onsite backup needs.

Tape backups will provide you with an offsite storage solution, but the price difference is much more for the tape drive and management software.

Don't go for the cheapest NAS hardware. That was a decision taken by the management at my previous company. Due to inconsistent behavior/performance they dropped the solutions after paying full price for implementing NASes in 11 divisions. Check out reviews about the NAS before buying them.