The EVO shared storage systems allow for several possible RAID levels, and even multiple RAID levels per pool, but while RAID provides a level of protection against a hardware failure, it is not a substitute for backing up data.
Although RAID can offer some protection against data loss due to disk failure, RAID is not a backup strategy. All critical data contained on any storage device should be routinely backed up to at least one other device, and a set of your backup data should be securely maintained at a separate physical location.
EVO supports multiple ways to backup your data, including tools that are built directly into the system.
Here are a few options:
- Our latest Slingshot automation engine can replicate EVO shares, folders, and files on schedule to the same or another EVO, an EVO Nearline, USB drive attached to EVO, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Dropbox, Wasabi, Backblaze, or an SMB destination. Replication features are available as a plug-in to EVO OS v.6.1 or higher.
- Any backup utility that’s capable of mounting network shares can be used to mount EVO volumes and copy their data to the backup destination.
- EVO Nearline is an affordable storage solution specifically designed and built to act as a stage between the online storage and backup or archive. A recommended solution is to replicate your tier 1 EVO to a Nearline EVO, and then to replicate your Nearline EVO to an off-site/Amazon S3 tier.
- We also partner with StorageDNA (SDNA) to make the archive process simple, and we continually develop more backup/archive integration options for both EVO and the ShareBrowser software (follow us on Twitter for news about these developments).
- As of EVO version 7.1: Archive and Restore jobs are now built into ShareBrowser and Slingshot to help users efficiently manage storage by archiving files/folders to remote SMB or S3 storage and restoring them when needed.
You may also want to review how to backup your ShareBrowser database!