Best backup solution for small office

[EMU]

Hi guys

I am planning my office and am wondering about a backup strategy. The office will have six PCs and a server. From what have read it seems to make sense to go for a combination of online backup and raided NAS storage. I got this info from American sites though. I s online backup even practical in South Africa? I look forward to your response.

 

[bleh69]

If the data is not in the tens of Gigabytes (Because of our relatively high bandwidth cost), I would push it all to an amazon S3 bucket. That way its off site and redundant. Otherwise... a NAS would suffice, although this will carry risk as it will not be off site. Some disk space with a local hosting provider would also work, although they usually do not have redundancy in case of disk failure (unless you manage this yourself)

I could set up the S3 part for you for a few clams.

 

[syntax]

how much data, how frequent do you need to backup, how sensitive is it and how much do you wanna spend?

The answers will dictate what solution you use, online backing up is ok i guess if you have small amounts. But I dont see it being that viable for proper backups...restoration turn around time might also be an issue if you have online backups...

 

[hilton]

The above advice is not that great. If you ar serious about your data you need to have a proper backup AND recovery strategy. There's little point hosting your online backups somewhere on the internet because when you have a crash and need to restore 20Gsb this will take for ages to restore over the net.

Think about rotating three external USB drives for daily backups and system state stuff, then a local NAS is a good idea simply because of the convenience of a quick restore but don't store this anywhere near the PCs. It needs to be in some cupboard where Sipho and his friends won't think of looking.

Also think about month end snap shots. The problem with incremental backups is that sometimes you only discover a problem a couple of weeks later and then the backup (ext drive or NAS) is now overwritten.

If you want a trusted and secure off-site backup solution then PM me as I just happen to sell this type of thing. Bottom line is that you need to be able to restore QUICKLY.

Hope this helps.

 

[spiderz]

External Hdd, which can be stored off-site in a safe.
If you really wanna be good, get a drive for each day.

 

[bleh69]

Please dont let Hilton sell you 20x what you actually need for a small office with 6 computers. I see it happen all the time in the industry, with your super-duper backup solution spending 99.9% of the time sitting there doing nothing because some smooth mouthed salesman told you you needed it. Spiderz suggestion sounds perfect for you if you are concerned with quick recovery.

 

[syntax]

Please dont let Hilton sell you 20x what you actually need for a small office with 6 computers. I see it happen all the time in the industry, with your super-duper backup solution spending 99.9% of the time sitting there doing nothing because some smooth mouthed salesman told you you needed it. Spiderz suggestion sounds perfect for you if you are concerned with quick recovery.

actually his advice was pretty similar to spiderz...

 

[Other Pineapple Smurf]

Please dont let Hilton sell you 20x what you actually need for a small office with 6 computers. I see it happen all the time in the industry, with your super-duper backup solution spending 99.9% of the time sitting there doing nothing because some smooth mouthed salesman told you you needed it. Spiderz suggestion sounds perfect for you if you are concerned with quick recovery.

Agree here. Go the Amazon route.

For always available data, use Dropbox / Google Apps and if your worried about security for sensitive documents, then use iSigned.com.

Big problem with on-site backups are fires and water damage!!!!!

 

[hilton]

Please dont let Hilton sell you 20x what you actually need for a small office with 6 computers. I see it happen all the time in the industry, with your super-duper backup solution spending 99.9% of the time sitting there doing nothing because some smooth mouthed salesman told you you needed it. Spiderz suggestion sounds perfect for you if you are concerned with quick recovery.

You obviously know nothing about business needs then and absolutely nothing about disaster recovery. Boy do I love guys like you, it makes getting a new customer sooooooooo much easier. Thanks!

 

[ponder]

Get a dual NAS setup, keeping one offsite. Bring it into the office once a week to sync and then remove it again. If you have the bandwidth available look at an offsite/online backup solution.

 

[Rocket-Boy]

I normally recommend a combination of NAS and rotated external drives. It works perfectly for my sites (I have 32 with 2900 users total)
One of my clients has a network cable leading into a walk in safe which has saved them in the past when everything in the office was stolen.
A normal safe would also be able to handle this and has the advantage of being fire proof and water resistant to a degree.

 

[ivusi]

Seeing that you are in the planning stage, this is what I would do ( I have it on my home network/lab - http://www.ratemynetworkdiagram.com/?i=12152) and that is a QNAP TS-559 Pro

1) Install ESXi 4 (if 64bit) or 3.5 (32 bit)
2) Purchase the QNAP TS-559 Pro Turbo NAS - I picked mine up for a shade over £1100 with 4Tb storage RAID 5
3)Create new virtual server - if you already have a physical one, do P2V (http://go.vmware.com) and import into your virtual environment and use the QNAP as your datastore backup
3) Users can use QNAP to backup their stuff and do restore if necessary (Software included with device)

If your server goes south - then new server, install vmware and import backed up VM - All done in under 1 hour - My HP DL380G3 motherborad died. Moved VM's onto other server and all servers back on line in less than 10 minutes !!

VMWare Esxi is free, the QNAP NAS is unbeleiveble price for a NAS solution. Our work uses a SAN and that is EXPENSIVE!!

Just my 2c
Cheers

 

[syntax]

Seeing that you are in the planning stage, this is what I would do ( I have it on my home network/lab - http://www.ratemynetworkdiagram.com/?i=12152) and that is a QNAP TS-559 Pro

1) Install ESXi 4 (if 64bit) or 3.5 (32 bit)
2) Purchase the QNAP TS-559 Pro Turbo NAS - I picked mine up for a shade over £1100 with 4Tb storage RAID 5
3)Create new virtual server - if you already have a physical one, do P2V (http://go.vmware.com) and import into your virtual environment and use the QNAP as your datastore backup
3) Users can use QNAP to backup their stuff and do restore if necessary (Software included with device)

If your server goes south - then new server, install vmware and import backed up VM - All done in under 1 hour - My HP DL380G3 motherborad died. Moved VM's onto other server and all servers back on line in less than 10 minutes !!

VMWare Esxi is free, the QNAP NAS is unbeleiveble price for a NAS solution. Our work uses a SAN and that is EXPENSIVE!!

Just my 2c
Cheers

I seriously doubt u could get an owner of a small company to spend 14k on a backup solution

 

[ivusi]

I seriously doubt u could get an owner of a small company to spend 14k on a backup solution

My bad - I would have thought 14k for a NAS backup solution was fairly cheap. I bought one for myself ( was slightly expensive for me), but for a company (especially as the Directors are held responsible for loss of data) that was worth it!

I may be wrong.

 

[syntax]

My bad - I would have thought 14k for a NAS backup solution was fairly cheap. I bought one for myself ( was slightly expensive for me), but for a company (especially as the Directors are held responsible for loss of data) that was worth it!

I may be wrong.

i agree, its not too bad...but local business owners wont realise the importance of spending the money and will invest in some low budget solution then complain when it takes ages to restore..

 

[SilverNodashi]

For this kind of network I would setup a central backup server / NAS as you have described. Have each PC backup / sync their data to the NAS on a regular basis (the more regular, the better, i.e. hourly or daily). Then sync the backup / NAS to another backup / NAS server, remotely. If you can setup a wireless link to another office / house close-by, then it will be easier. Otherwise just put them as far apart as possible, to avoid theft / fire / lightning damage / etc.

Then have 2 or 3 external USB drives which backup the data automatically as soon as it's plugged in, and have someone take it home and swap with the other one. i.e. let the accountant / boss / secretary take the drive home in the afternoon, and bring the other one backup. i.e. there's always one in the office and one offsite. For further protection, let her swap out 3 drives. OR, let 2 people swap out 3 drivers, every other day - Monday, Wednesday & Friday it's Tom's turn. Tuesday & Thursday it's Ann's turn.

Try and make the whole process as easy as possible. The less work is involved, the easier it would be todo, and will be done.

Alternatively, if you have the cash to spare, make use of an online backup solution. Or look at using Metrocash to collect U swap the drives every day.

 

[Nod]

You could also look at Bacula backup software (http://www.bacula.org/en/). It is much the same as EMC Networker, only free, but misses the Oracle RMAN modules. It can backup to just about any device you can throw at it.

 

[Arthur]

1) Acronis Backup & Recovery Server for the server, Acronis Backup & Recovery Workstation for the PCs.
2) External USB drives as required to suit dataset size, frequency of backup, recoverability and budget.

Full back-up and disk imaging. Bare metal recovery. Two-click conversion to VM. Restore to dissimilar hardware with Universal Restore add-in.

Works great for me.

 

[jlct021]

Cobain backup. Its free and easy to use.

http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm

 

[AfricanTech]

Outside of all the technical issues, ensure that you consider the human issues - if the backups are a pain to do , are time consuming and require you to connect/disconnect and transport stuff around, then it will fall into disuse.

One of way of getting around the problem with slow restore from an Amazon S3, is to have an automatic backup your data to the cloud daily and restore from the cloud daily as well at another site (like your home) using automated software/scripts. That way, if disaster does strike, then you have the local copy available while still having a redundant copy in the cloud.

By the way, you may get better advice if you indicated what kind of ballpark you're looking at spending for the initial capital expenditure and how much you are willing to spend for ongoing "operational" expenditure.