[TriLUG] Online Cloud Offsite Backup

[Clay Stuckey]

OK, here comes a short novel....

I have been researching several options. One is that the owner of  
Celito has extended an offer to Trilug and it's members. It has to be  
for group/personal use. In other words, no money making. They have a  
10MB connection and 1st class facility. For $120/mo, he will let us  
put what is needed in there. There would be no bandwidth or rack space  
limitations. Of course I wouldn't try to consume several racks. But I  
would think that 3-10 rack spaces would be fine. We would also get a / 
28 public subnet. With virtual hosting, DNAT and 13 usable IPs  
(assuming we implement a transparent firewall), we would have room for  
mucho stuffo.

For equipment, it really depends on how many people would want to get  
involved, their needs, plan for future growth and any redundancy  
desired. This is of course if it is decided to go this route. We could  
drop about $200-$600 on a firewall depending on if we went used or  
new. The biggest thing I have been looking at has been storage  
options. Looks like the best bang for the buck is to go with a 1 or 2u  
server with 4-8 cores, 12GB or more of RAM and  that has an available  
PCI-E expansion card. For  $200-$500 you can get a really nice PCI-E  
SATA/SAS raid card that supports host swap; and more importantly hot  
spares. Then add a 4.5TB external storage array (3 1.5tb drives in a  
raid 5 with 1 hot spare) for $650. This can be easily augmented or for  
about $2k we could start off with 15TB including redundancy and hot  
spares. All in all you could do a nice enclave for less than $2k. This  
should easily support 8 VMs with lots of space for backups. If we had  
8 people buy in, it would be about $265 up front and $15/month. This  
is a big bang-for-the-buck option that would only consume 4u. Celito  
has a lesser hosting facility w/o UPS that goes for $75/mo flat rate.  
We would have about 1.5Mb bandwidth. If Trilug wanted to make it an  
official project and include it as a benefit for a paid membership, we  
could go much bigger and better.

I know the other option that has been presented looks to be a bit  
cheaper. I think that this one might be more for the money. It all  
comes down to the wants, needs, and budget of the suckers... I mean  
people... that get involved.

I think now might be a good time for interested parties to reply with  
what their needs might be and what they might be willing to pay up  
front and ongoing for said service.

Myself, I would like the following:
1) Online Backup - this would need to be a very lightweight dedicated  
VM with a 2TB encrypted volume. I would need exclusive access to the  
console assuming we run ESXi4. I could foresee needing to add space in  
the future.
2) Basic web services - apache,php,mysql,bind,sendmail for my personal  
site that could run on a shared VM. Nothing special here
I would be willing to pony up $500 or maybe a little more as well as  
do lots of legwork (and fingerwork) to make it happen. I would pay $15- 
$20 a month. If I were to be one of the people doing a significant  
amount of the support and administration, I would be interested in  
talking about a reduced rate.


Clay Stuckey


On Dec 22, 2009, at 9:46 PM, Keith Woodie wrote:

> I would like to meet and discuss.  I think this could become a very  
> good
> option for a lot of us in the same situation!
>
> If we did such a setup... what kind of storage infrastructure would  
> we have
> available?   I am assuming it would be internal drives.
>
> Thanks.
> Keith Woodie
> Mike Ditka <http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mike_ditka.html 
> >  -
> "If God had wanted man to play soccer, he wouldn't have given us  
> arms."
>
> On Tue, Dec 22, 2009 at 2:08 PM, Steve Litt  
> <slitt at troubleshooters.com>wrote:
>
>> On Tuesday 22 December 2009 06:39:15 bak wrote:
>>> Steve Litt wrote:
>>>> On Monday 21 December 2009 22:35:45 Keith Woodie wrote:
>>>>> Is there anybody using an online "rsync" or other type of backup  
>>>>> at
>>>>> home?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks.
>>>>
>>>> Just one man's opinion -- I wouldn't be caught dead outsourcing  
>>>> backup.
>>>> What if they crash? What if someone breaks in and steals your  
>>>> valuable
>>>> and secret data?
>>>>
>>>> I use rsync backup at home, but it's on a LAN, not over the net:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200609/200609.htm
>>>
>>> Sure, but what if your house burns down? When it comes to data, I  
>>> like
>>> the belt and suspenders approach -- use both.
>>
>> That's where once or twice a month you make a couple DVD backups  
>> from your
>> backup server, housing one in your house and one in the house of a  
>> very
>> trusted friend or relative.
>>
>> SteveT
>>
>> Steve Litt
>> Recession Relief Package
>> http://www.recession-relief.US
>> Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/stevelitt
>>
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