Backup suite with centralized management and VSS?

J

joweaver88

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I am not sure if this is the right forum for this so if a mod feels it is better somewhere else please move it.

So I have had some good experience with Acronis backup and recovery server in the past. I like the centralized management, and the universal restore function is awesome.

I just built a new server for our office and I am looking into backup and recovery options and I wanted to get some opinions. I would go with Acronis but it is out of our price range, I am looking for a less expensive (or open source, free) alternative. Any suggestions would be great... here is our needs.

Backup over network
Centralized management is a must
GUI (this rules out amanda for linux)
Volume shadow copy
Virtual Machine support
Ability to restore a single file or an entire system

I know this is generally not something you go the "cheap" route for... and I am not even sure a less expensive program exists that will do all this. But I thought it couldn't hurt to ask :)
 
Crashplan PRO Enterprise.

You'd install the PROe Server then install the clients.

Here is the catch -- no VMM backup support for now (they are working on it).

It doesn't do image based backups, only files.

Consider it because its easy, affordable and very scale-able.
 
LoStMaTt said:
Crashplan PRO Enterprise.

You'd install the PROe Server then install the clients.

Here is the catch -- no VMM backup support for now (they are working on it).

It doesn't do image based backups, only files.

Consider it because its easy, affordable and very scale-able.
Click to expand...

Non image based backups in a business are dumb imo.
 
Is Microsoft System Center affordable for you? Microsoft has their DPM for backing up servers.
If you are mostly virtualized with a few hosts, AppAssure may work for you.
Veeam is also pretty good but expensive.
 
The centralized management piece is what is going to drive your cost up. There are great backup options out there that will do everything you want....but not centrally managed.

DPM, Unitrends, Commvault, Appassure....none of those are cheaper than acronis.....
 
QHalo said:
It's called Change Block Tracking.
Click to expand...

Great tech but not all configs support it, and some operations reset it.

Storagecraft isn't free although it is really good for the price.

OP have you looked at Unitrends UEB appliance? They have a free version for up to 4 vm's. Not sure what your environment is since you never specified....they also have lower price appliances that can back up as many clients/systems as you want as long as it fits on the appliance.
 
Eickst said:
Yes because when I want to back up a 2TB file server hourly I love backing up the entire image.

Every type of backup has its place.
Click to expand...

Oh, I forgot... every modern image based backup doesn't have incremental backups.

Those stand alone file/folder backups will be great when your DC or some other critical server dies.
 
Database said:
Oh, I forgot... every modern image based backup doesn't have incremental backups.

Those stand alone file/folder backups will be great when your DC or some other critical server dies.
Click to expand...

There are several prominent backup vendors whose products do not do 'image-based' backups of physical servers. Some don't even support physical servers at all. Many are not capable of application level backups from the 'image-level'. Some products have image based recovery that has to be mounted first, picking a specific recovery point, and then all files have to be navigated to folder by folder. And if you don't find it, have to unmount it, mount the next oldest one, navigate some more, etc etc ad nauseam until you find the file, or not. While those exact same vendors, with the 'stand alone file/folder backups', offer full search features, not just through a single recovery point, but every recovery point in existence for that client, all in a single search.

Every backup method has its place, no one's environment, requirements, or budgets are the same. There are no absolutes when it comes to backing up data. Saying file level backups are dumb is pretty short-sighted.
 
My experience with crashplan proe has shown that it is incredibly slow, you'll be lucky to hit 100Mbit tops during file restores (very fast hardware, all ssd's). That's a lot of fun when dealing with terabytes. The documentation is practically non existent and the server software is a black box which breaks frequently during updates. I ran into major problems with just about every upgrade. I'm sick of dealing with it, their support is decent but coming from the open source world where most problems you run into can be fixed yourself rather quickly having to wait a day between emails with support to poke at a black box was just infuriating to me.

I'm in the same boat as you and haven't really found a reasonably priced alternative, the only one i've come across is vembu storegrid but i'm only in the very initial stages of testing it. It does check all of your boxes i believe. I'd love to know if anyone else has some additional suggestions, i personally do not need bare metal restores it would just be nice.
 
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