I’d like to put Offsite Data Backup in a different light for you by comparing our highly comprehensive daily backup service with an attempt to do the job properly using a media based system.
One must consider the man-hour costs to do a complete backup and verification of 70GB which would take at least an hour every day. = 22 x (R85/hr) R1870 per month.
Offsite Rotation of backups is very costly, however this service is necessary to minimise loss or theft, or the risk of unencrypted backups falling into the wrong hands, as they sealed until the next rotation. A good service would rotate the backups every week at a cost of around R650+ per month, or every day at R1450+ (recommended option).
Media costs are significant. You’d probably use an LTO tape drive because the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) in the long run is lower, but initial hardware and media capex is prohibitively expensive ( LTO100/200 – R24800 + tapes – R2500). The media has a limited rewritable life (it’s recommended to archive tape sets every 3-6 months) and the read/writes are relatively slow. Let’s assume you have a tape per weekday, rotate the daily backups offsite, and archive them every 3 months to be replaced with new ones. = (1 tape x 5 days x R250/tape x 2 sets) R2500 every 3 months or R833 per month.
That’s a grand total of R27300 upfront and R4153 per month to do the job properly. Of course one can cut corners and shave costs, DLT tape backups are initially much more cost-effective but would span 2 tapes and suffer from slower read/writes.
In this light, the A-Logic backup system stands alone. The system is automatic, offsite, secure, multi-redundant, encrypted, easy-to-use and most of all – cost effective.
Tony Bartok