Technology As A Journey, Not a Destination

I’ve been struggling to figure out two problems, one personal and one for work, but both nearly identical. It’s a question of backups. At home, I have an Apple Time Capsule that backs up automatically using Time Machine on all of our Macs. This works great and is completely effortless on my behalf. If my computer were to crash or fall in the bathtub tomorrow, I would be secure in knowing my data was protected. Forever the pessimist, though, I asked myself what if the house burns down or is carried away in a tornado? Then I would be out everything. I have had this nagging desire to have an offsite backup solution for quite some time. Previously, I would burn DVDs of family pictures and other memories and take them to the home of a relative periodically. Sometimes months (or a year) would elapse before I would add to the collection, so in the event of a catastrophe I would be completely out of luck.

I kept hearing advertisements for some of these third party sites like Carbonite and Mozy. I love the idea of automated offside backup, but just have a distrust of dumping all of my personal data off to the cloud and having no control over it.  For my work it’s easier to accept because most of what I do is a matter of public record anyway.

CrashPlan was another provider that I heard several times. I downloaded a trial version and was fully expecting to just bite the bullet and sign up for the hosted offside backup and wait the months it would take for a complete backup to take place over the Internet.  What I discovered, however, is that CrashPlan lets you back up to other computers over the Internet for free.  The backup is encrypted on the drive and in transit (according to them) and you can build your own automated offsite backup.  So here is what I did:

1. I backed up to my 2TB External Drive on each of my home computers. It took several days.
2. I installed Crashplan on my work computer and added it to my CrashPlan account, but not backing up anything on it.
3. I then took the hard drive from home to work. Using the process to copy a backup archive, I made my work computer a destination for my home computers.
4. I then removed the local folder destination on my home computers so that it wouldn’t report a failure.

All three of my home computers now do automated offsite backup to the hard drive on my desk.  It took some time for that initial backup on each computer, but that was the bulk of the time.  Seeding the backup by doing it locally saved months of uploading, and probably a nasty letter from my ISP since it represented about 1.5TB of data.  For me that solution didn’t cost anything extra because I already had the 2TB drive.

Now, on to the backup solution for work.  CrashPlan offers a Pro solution as well, and provides server software so you can host your own backups on site.  I see a possibility for this as a solution to some of our mobile computers, but for now, it’s going to solve the tape backup dilemma.  We still back up to tape, and someone takes that tape home on a rotating basis.  This works, but an automated solution would be much simpler and expandable.  Since we have a good network connection between our buildings, bandwidth would not be an issue.

So here is my solution:

1. I took an old PC desktop computer and installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and enabled the remote desktop option so it can be headless.
2. Purchased two 2TB Hard Drives (~$150 each) and attached them to the PC, formatting them for Linux.
3. Installed CrashPlan Pro (part of a 30 day trial) and modified it to use those two external drives as storage.
4. Install CrashPlan Pro client on server and set the backup to automate.

Once the initial backup completes, I’ll move this setup to the network closet at one of the other schools.  I realize that if a fire or tornado wipes out both of our schools, well, we would have some data loss.  However, if this were to happen, the data loss would probably be the least of our problems as a school district.  Our Student Information and accounting systems are all hosted offsite, so all that would be lost is Active and Open Directory, network home folders and some share points.  I think it’s a risk that’s reasonable.

After the 30 day trial, we will purchase 5 seats for CrashPlan Pro.  There is a discount for educational institutions, and for that small fee we will no longer have to swap tapes.  The great thing about CrashPlan is that it will just run in the background and is automated.  It’s just one more thing the machine can do.

Here are some handy tips for those schools that do not have dedicated staff.

“Don’t:”

1. Trust salespeople.  About anything.  Ever.  If you remember none of these rules, write this one down and never forget it.
2. Buy a complete, all in one, web 2.0, interactive, fully intuitive, interactive learning and blah, blah blah from a company promising it for your web solution.  You can have a web site up and running for around $20 a month that will look professional and just about anyone can do it.
3. Buy hosted e-mail.  Google Apps for Education is Free.  7+GB of mail, hundreds of users.  Plus you get access to all of the other amazing features of Google Apps, too.
4. Care about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – see Rule 1.  You can help your search engine rankings in ways that won’t cost anything.

“Do”

1. Consider Google Apps for Education
2. Hire a “techie” for questions.  Even if it’s only a couple of hours, you will make much better decisions if you have some knowledge of what those salespeople are trying to sell. (See Rule #1 above)
3. Consider Free/Open Source Software
4. Create social media sites for your school – Facebook and Twitter.  They are a fantastic (and free) way to communicate with your community and students.
5. Look at what other schools are doing.  You can learn a lot from others in your similar situation.  Many times, someone else has already made the mistakes that you are considering making.