4pin Molex PC Pwr Switch and Programmable??

[Gary Tait]

-snip


Redundant systems have nothing to do with this.


Exactly. What do backups protect from? A number of things including SW
malicious or otherwise gone bad and power glitches and hardware gone bad.

How would software controlled hardware protect from that though, it
the software were to become faulty or hacked by nefarious doers.

Tapes are a mess for the small/medium business with modest backup needs.


Too small for good image backups. Remember that many backup strategies
requires the greatest consideration to how one bare metal restores.

help.

Too expensive for a small business. But a robust geographically distributed
WAN backup solution ALWAYS includes some cycle that is offline or only near
line....spin it down.


Wrong, in fact it's the power semiconductors that are most stressed by
repeated power cycling. Modern HDs have power cycle ratings in the 10Ks.


Too expensive and archaic for small configurations.


I mean something that's not goona be in a trojan or random code gone crazy
more often than every 1e6 years.


That is exactly how it's goona be done except I'll be using Acronis
TrueImage. I don't want the removeable backup drive spinning except during
the backup.

Then you can have the backup PC off until you need it, perhaps with
WOL, I don't know how it would work exactly.

 

[Gary Tait]

And beforehand if the HD can hold more than one backup cycle.


ISA maybe but PCI with a couple of reed relays or some such??? Anyone??

Something controlled by Paralell port, or perhaps USB or serial.

If you are going to have a dedicated backup PC, use it's wakeup timer
to wake it in buisness downtime, backup, do virus scan, and shut down.
Optionally would be to make a network isolator, using a 4 pole relay,
controlled by the means above.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

-snip

How would software controlled hardware protect from that though, it
the software were to become faulty or hacked by nefarious doers.

The threat from all these sources is proportional to the amount of time the
drive is spinning on an active system. Diminish that time and diminish the
threats.

-snip

Then you can have the backup PC off until you need it, perhaps with
WOL, I don't know how it would work exactly.

The backups will be unattended and in the middle of the night but having the
machine off until backup time is a real possibility. Putting the whole
backup machine on a timer or on a power switch controlled by the
server....hmmm. The server would know when to turn it on but not when to
turn it off...hmm...server on self off switch...hmm.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

-snip

Something controlled by Paralell port, or perhaps USB or serial.

Yes, it turns out that there are many such on each of the interfaces you

If you are going to have a dedicated backup PC,

Dedicated only in the middle of the night else it's a utility and multimedia
machine.

use it's wakeup timer
to wake it in buisness downtime, backup, do virus scan, and shut down.

Yep, that sounds like the reasonable solution. Now what kind of power
cycling or external stimulus will cause an XP Pro machine that was shutdown
to start booting?? For the case after the backup is complete and selfr
shutdown one doesn't want it to boot until the operator does in the morning.
For the case before the backup then one wants it to boot upon some non human
external stimulus.

Optionally would be to make a network isolator, using a 4 pole relay,
controlled by the means above.

Don't want to go there and that closes only a few of the possible threats.

 

[Gary Tait]

-snip


The threat from all these sources is proportional to the amount of time the
drive is spinning on an active system. Diminish that time and diminish the
threats.

What I am getting at, what good is a software sontrol for the drives,
when a hacker could as easily get to them as you do, including turning
them on.

 

[Gary Tait]

-snip


Yes, it turns out that there are many such on each of the interfaces you


Dedicated only in the middle of the night else it's a utility and multimedia
machine.


Yep, that sounds like the reasonable solution. Now what kind of power
cycling or external stimulus will cause an XP Pro machine that was shutdown
to start booting??

Your BIOS may have an on timer (I think mine does, or at least one of
my other PCs). Otherwise you need an alarm clock time device you can
set up to close the on button.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

What I am getting at, what good is a software sontrol for the drives,
when a hacker could as easily get to them as you do, including turning
them on.

No, a hacker will not know that I have some proprietary code to power the
computer. Such an attack("could") would likely be 1e6 times less likely.
Backups and protection is only about probability.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Your BIOS may have an on timer (I think mine does, or at least one of
my other PCs). Otherwise you need an alarm clock time device you can
set up to close the on button.

Probably something slightly more robust than that is needed as there's
weekend timing etc. Ideally it's a USB relay controlled from a scheduled
batch/script file on the server that will turn on the backup machine.

It appears that I'm converging on an overall solution. Now I need to find a
USB relay(117 AC) where there's a deterministic power cycle state known to
be OFF. I suspect that such a quest is tractable.
threats.

 

[Gary Tait]

Probably something slightly more robust than that is needed as there's
weekend timing etc. Ideally it's a USB relay controlled from a scheduled
batch/script file on the server that will turn on the backup machine.

Thinking, you could look into doing X-10 control.

 

[Ron Reaugh]

Thinking, you could look into doing X-10 control.

Yes or simply a USB controlled AC switch.

 

[Kevin Lawton]

| |
|
|| Thinking, you could look into doing X-10 control.
|
| Yes or simply a USB controlled AC switch.

No need to be so complicated.
If your PCs are networked together, then you just need to make sure that one
of them supports 'Wake On LAN' - this is a function of the network card,
m/board and BIOS settings together.
I'll give an example:
Let's assume that the machine holding the live data which you want to back
up is 'Wake On LAN' enabled, and you'd like your backups to occur at
midnight every day. We'll call this machine 'Bill'. The other machine, the
one to hold the backups we'll call 'Ben'. Bill is a critical server or
workstation with valuable data, Ben is the backup machine. Okay ?
You set the BIOS timer on Ben to wqke the machine up at midnight daily.
You set 'Wake On LAN' enabled in Bill's BIOS.
You set both machines to 'Sleep', 'Hibernate', 'Suspend' or 'Power-down'
after a reasonable period of inactivity.
You create a script on Ben, to run at startup when 'woken up' by the timer,
to:
1 -- Send a 'Magic Packet' (10 repititions of the network card's hardware
address) to Bill's network card.
2 -- Wait for a minute or two while Bill wakes up into a state which will
allow Ben to read the files to be backed up.
3 -- Copy the files/directories to be backed up from Bill onto Ben's storage
medium. Maybe mark them as 'read only' or restrict access as required.
I do this on my own network - it works !
You can add more to the process by installing 'remote shutdown' software,
then Ben's scrpit can have step (4) which will remotely shut Bill down. It
could then have step (5) so Ben could shut itself down too.
If you are concerned about network security, then you could install an extra
network card in Bill, connected by a cross-over cable to Ben so that they
are on their own network.
Kevin.