Backups

[hungrybeaver]

I've found myself in a situation where I need a backup solution for a few branches. At these locations, tape drives are not an option because of the setup and because it would mean having someone change out the tapes. I want to get as far away from user input as possible.

Right now I'm thinking about putting large external hard drives in (I know, I know) as that is the simplest and quickest way to get things rolling. We may consider a NAS or SAN solution.

Do you guys have any ideas for a backup solution? Any particular brand/model of HDD that I should go for? They're all running Windows Servers, I'm happy to use NtBackup but if there is something out there (for free) that you know of I'll definitely look into it.

 

[PsyWulf]

How much data,Type of data,Type of servers,Software running on those servers,Budget,Connectivity

 

[Anthro]

Our company uses the Standard windows SBS Backup, in conjunction with :
# Cobian Backup *Free
# Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 + Acronis Recovery for M$ Exchange (Licensed software

Our backup strategy entails 5 Full backup drives, as well as 2 incremental backups
We swap these out between branches every day

 

[hungrybeaver]

They're Server 2003 boxes, all have USB. The data will vary between the sites, but there would be between 10GB-50GB worth of stuff. It will mainly be Users documents, shared folders, etc. No unique data. There isn't really a budget but I'd like to keep it below R2k per site.

All branches are linked together in 1 WAN. However sending a large amount of data of the WAN will take forever.

 

[hungrybeaver]

Our company uses the Standard windows SBS Backup, in conjunction with :
# Cobian Backup *Free
# Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 + Acronis Recovery for M$ Exchange (Licensed software

Our backup strategy entails 5 Full backup drives, as well as 2 incremental backups
We swap these out between branches every day

USB Drives?

 

[McGuywer]

We use BackupPC. Could be difficult to setup but after that, its really nice backup solution. Oh and free of course. Opensource.

 

[Anthro]

USB Drives?

USB3 Drives, with a SATA2 fallback option, Western Digital "MyBook" with build in RAID1 (2tb drives)

I see that your budget is 2k, unfortunately with recent events (flooding)drives became horrendously expensive :'(

Also by 'swap out' I mean I drive there every morning through Margate, and then back to our offices again

They have the same setup, our backups go there and vise versa

 

[PsyWulf]

All branches are linked together in 1 WAN. However sending a large amount of data of the WAN will take forever.

If there isn't a lot of data syncing only changes will be very low in bandwidth intensity.

Regarding user interaction the only real option is Robotic drive/tape libraries But these and SAN/NAS solutions will blow that budget out of the water entirely

Sizes of files? Types of files? Are all sites on 1 domain or multiple domains?

 

[ShaughnK]

free software is readily available so I suppose the main question is you need to ask whether you are doing the backups for disaster recovery in event of a crashed server which means the backup media can be local, or to get the data offsite in event of a fire/disaster or breakin and theft of computers. Tapes are a pain but they are portable and relatively strong.
You start carting external drives around and they wont last, especially if its local staff doing said carting.

That said if you need to use external drives and dont hate Seagate, then look at the Seagate range of GoFlex drives. The nice thing is they are sealed drives but clip on and off a standard base. So each premises can be given a couple drives to rotate on a weekly basis. You can buy differnet GoFlex bases as well. USB2.0, USB 3.0, One of them has a network port, assign an ip to it and you are on your way.

I have heard some very bad reports on the Seagate Black armour range so be wary of those.

 

[hungrybeaver]

USB3 Drives, with a SATA2 fallback option, Western Digital "MyBook" with build in RAID1 (2tb drives)

I see that your budget is 2k, unfortunately with recent events (flooding)drives became horrendously expensive :'(

Also by 'swap out' I mean I drive there every morning through Margate, and then back to our offices again

They have the same setup, our backups go there and vise versa

Hectic, thats quite something to do no a daily basis!

If there isn't a lot of data syncing only changes will be very low in bandwidth intensity.

Regarding user interaction the only real option is Robotic drive/tape libraries But these and SAN/NAS solutions will blow that budget out of the water entirely

Sizes of files? Types of files? Are all sites on 1 domain or multiple domains?

Yeah the initial file transfer will be the killer. I'd have to have the data shipped to me and then setup a sync.

The size/type will differ. All I want is to backup the users redirected My Documents, a few share folders which house txt, xls, pdf, doc, exe, tps files, and the system state.
3 of the 5 sites are on the domain, the other 2 are on a local workgroup.

That said if you need to use external drives and dont hate Seagate, then look at the Seagate range of GoFlex drives. The nice thing is they are sealed drives but clip on and off a standard base. So each premises can be given a couple drives to rotate on a weekly basis. You can buy differnet GoFlex bases as well. USB2.0, USB 3.0, One of them has a network port, assign an ip to it and you are on your way.

I have heard some very bad reports on the Seagate Black armour range so be wary of those.

I'm liking the GoFlex idea, specifically the base options. Just a bit wary of Seagate... I have a hard drive that IS NOT supported under Windows 2003. It supports every other OS except this one.

 

[katangeleus]

Attix5 http://www.attix5.co.za You can provide your own servers or backup to their media. Has single instance storage and really great product, Great support and have never let me down.

With this I have 10 computers and 1 server backup from a very very remote site to out attix 5 server at our ISP along with my exchange and other servers. My other servers and every laptop backup to our other server at out office. These servers are all mirrored but it has saved me a ton of hard disk space due to the SIS.

You can set up the Backup server with a URL to backup to, so no need to host a backup server at each site. You have central monitoring and if you really want to try save on Hardware, Attix5 have their own hardware you can backup to.

 

[avert]

hp microserver with extra drives.

rsync -avh --delete source/ destination/

then cp hardlink style to another place for snapshots.

Less then 2k easily per branch

 

[hungrybeaver]

Thanks for the replies.

Apparently Seagate don't like Windows 2003, and most of their products aren't compatible. For the moment I'm going to get a Samsung drive and collect data while I figure out the best route forward. The HP Microserver is looking like a good idea.