Network Guru question

[Bob Thomas]

Raven,

The town has tried everything. Problem is that the PD is in the old Digital Building. The "basement" is a dirt basement with wires exposed and wonderful Asbestos covered pipes. They have had a company in about 3 times to try to rid the place of mold. I had to go down there and help run the new cables (not dragging on the dirt like the last bunch) and let me tell you. I will NEVER go down there again. It was awful!

Kenyee,

We're running UPS' on each of the servers and each of the PC's. I.e. each has a dedicated UPS. I just got off the phone with the IT company and they all have come to the conclusion that the recent ice storms, outages, and line replacement may have sent a "spike" through the line and reset the firewall & messed up some other things. They said although the UPS' looked fine, they were 4.7 years old and could probably use a new battery. Also, they said that one of the servers UPS software was corrupted somehow so they reinstalled it and should be back on line.

We're trudging through this mess and realizing we'll need upgrades very soon. Going to be watching the funds at the end of the fiscal year and see if we can't swing a new server.....keeping our fingers crossed!

Again, thanks to all of you for the support, suggestions and help. It has truly been "eye opening" as to what we're going to need. I know just enough to get myself in trouble and you guys are helping me make heads or tails out of this.

Everyone be safe and Happy New Year!

[Bob Thomas]

Well, that didn't last long.

Ended up having the company remote in and create new backup setup. They tried to eliminate as much as they could. We got about 5 successful backups but are, once again, failing due to space. As of Monday, we had 3 gb available but quickly used that.

I've started having people delete as much junk as the could but I fear we're up the creek with a boatload of crap and no paddle.

Going to have to break the bad news to the boss tomorrow...going to be a rough one! Could not come at a worse time!

Is there anything we could connect to the network without cracking the server boxes open that would backup our system? I.e. a stand-alone backup option?

[kenyee]

How in the world did you fill 3GB so quickly (is someone downloading craploads of pr0n :-)? Something is funky about what's being backed up...

You can attach a new external tape drive (depending on what interfaces that machine has) and then set it up to back up to the new tape drive instead. The company should be able to do that remotely if you plug it in. Examples (eSATA or SCSI external ports on your server):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16840108047
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16840108016

If the company does get in remotely again, you should probably ask them where in the world all your backup space is being used up. They should be able to do that basic "directory of backed up data" thing I asked you about before...post it here so we can see what's going on...

[Bob Thomas]

Unfortunately, I think the data from our records management system is eating the space. We had a busy week and a lot of cases (about 23 accidents alone) so with all the junk the state wants filled in, it's bound to eat up memory. Still sounds a little high.

I put a brand new tape in to see if that makes a difference. I doubt it. The tape I was using was only about 5 months old and used every 8 days, Fridays excluded.

This is just becoming a nightmare. The boss was a little upset but said to start researching alternatives. DEFINITELY don't have the cash for a new server. I sent an email to the school department, hoping they might have something sitting around. They get all the money

Thanks for the info, Kenyee. Hopefully, we'll have enough money to get something along those lines

[kenyee]

Most of that data is stored as text unless you guys are storing the digital video (are those dash cams even storing it in digital form?) from your cars with the cases, there's no way you ate up 3GB with 23 measly cases. To put this in perspective, 1KB is roughly 1 page of plain text. 1MB stores 1000 pages. 1GB stores 1 million pages of plain text.
A new tape won't make a difference since you're doing full backups which should be starting at the beginning of the tape.

You really do need to get that company to do a directory listing of your tape to figure out where all this space is being sucked up...they should have done this for you already if they were any good :-P

Good luck squeezing the school department stone for money...at this point, it seems like every department for themselves. In Boston, ISD just ticketed everyone in our neighborhood for not shoveling small section of an alley behind our houses (no one has shoveled it for 40+ years over the winter because no one goes out that way). Everyone's doing the money grab :-P

[JohnR]

Bob - what Ken Yee said - 3GB doesn't add up that quick. Go onto the backup exec screen and show us the total byte count for backup for the last couple weeks - like

Monday failed, 21,000,000
Tuesday failed, 21,000,000
Wednesday Success, 18,000,000
etc...

[Bob Thomas]

you know...I did see something like a list of backup items. I'll get that copied as well as the failures. Back in on Sunday....snow coming...good night to stay inside and "work on computers"

[Bob Thomas]

After having people trim their emails, files, pictures (all work related) and anything else they could, we freed up about 4gb. Good start.

With Deval making his announcement later today, we're going to have a pretty good idea as to how much money we WON'T have

[bloocrab]

What about a NAS box?