Hi Ty,

On 22/8/06 3:32 AM, "Ty Young" <Phillip_Young AT I2 DOT COM> wrote:

> Any thoughts on architecting a backup solution for a hosted environment,
> i.e. one data center with multiple customers' (separate) networks, each
> containing one or more systems that need backups to disk or tape at some
> frequency?     I'm sure this has come up before, but a search of the
> archives didn't yield anything useful.
> TIA
> -ty

A few tips that immediately spring to mind, having helped with a few such
environments:

1. Ensure that customers receive copies of their backup results for their
systems --- owner notify is your friend there, I guess.

2. If there's ever, ever a risk of customers wanting all their backups and
going elsewhere, you need to ensure that once written out to tape, backups
are separate. A good policy would be to backup to disk, clone to tape on a
"pool per customer basis", then stage to tape later in a similar policy. By
backing up to disk and facilitating recent backup-recoveries from disk you
can typically avoid getting into situations where you need to buy high-speed
access tape such as 9940 or other such media.

3. Keep a published compatibility list so that people don't introduce new
OSs or DBs which are not supported and expect a backup solution.

4. Similar to (3), keep a published list of what is included in the service
(e.g., basic OS backups only) and what is a costed extra.

Cheers,

Preston.

-- 
eBook coming soon, "Backup and Recovery: A corporate insurance policy"

http://enterprise.backup.googlepages.com

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