Corporate back up solution - suggestions

F

funstuie

n00b
Joined
Sep 26, 2006
Messages
58
Hello All

I have to review our backup setup again, not because it's not working but because it's a bit cobbled together and I would like to get a proper setup in place.

I have a pretty decent budget for this now but I am not out to spend as much as possible, I want to get a decent/easy to use solution for the company.

Our current setup is File server - 350GB of data, Exchange 2003 server - 90GB of mail data plus server state etc these are the main two I am worried about at the moment (we also have an SQL and a number of other small servers, web servers etc) The Mail backups were setup by a consultant and I don't think they are working for one he set it up to overwrite the same file all the time so there are no weekly/monthly backups (well there are but they are all in the one file which is copied offsite).

The file server is a nightmare due to the amount of data involved. At the moment we backup (using NT backup) to a hard drive array weekly and then a monthly drive goes offsite.

I don't mind using hard drives as although they may be flaky I have much more success getting data back than I ever did with the tape solution we previously used.

So what do you suggest? What software are you using and works for you? Do you backup to HD?

Backups are the bain of my life, luckily (touch wood) I have never had a major problem and I have been able to recover data when needed but I would like to implement a robust solution which can managed not just by me but other staff when needed all from one place.

So what would you suggest? SAN? LTO Drives?

Anyone got any links to good guides for backups? What software/hardware would you recommend?

Cheers
Stu
 
We backup 400GB to a LTO3 nightly, Exchange fits neatly on a 72GB DAT (for now). And we do a weekly backup to disk on both as well.

Tapes are clunky, but mostly reliable in my limited experience. Hard disk backups and shadow copies make life much easier when users do something stupid. The combination of both works well for us and helps us sleep better. :)
 
where I work, I've ended up using disk-to-disk backups between our various servers to a co-located "backup server" in another building on my college campus.

I use rsync over ssh to make "snapshots" of all the systems at various periods in time, and they get stored on the backup server. I've got scripts that map network drives to various key snapshots when users log in to their windows xp workstations (they get read only access to the snapshot of their data from an hour ago, yesterday evening, and a week ago)

If you've got familiarity with rsync, you could play with this ...

If not, try checking out http://backuppc.sourceforge.net -- they seem to have a pretty nice system for doing backups.
 
We use LTO3 for our backups in an autoloader. Our company has around 2.5TB of data to backup nightly (Securities firm!). This is extremely expensive and with remote agent licensing on Backup Exec you will probably be way over the budget you want.

I just recently introduced a Sonicwall CDP into our network for our File Server for faster restores of data after users delete something. You can install the agent onto an unlimited amount of PC's and depending on the priority of the device it can back it up on demand throughout the day. Take a peak, it is great for files but it does suck for mailboxes. For Exchange (assuming here) BackupExec does a great job IMO.
 
You need to look at Volume Shadow Copy Services if you are on Windows 2003.

We don't back anything up except our SVN code repository and some development folders on various machines in our test network. For that I use Cobian Backup, a nice simple free app that is faster and much easier than NT Backup.

All the rest of our servers are fully redundant (linux LVS clusters) and/or have raid 1, raid 5, or raid 6 arrays with hot spares.
 
funstuie said:
So what do you suggest? What software are you using and works for you? Do you backup to HD?
Click to expand...

Get TrueImage. I got the Windows Server version. It can do sector-by-sector backups WHILE BEING USED. Pretty slick system... I have mine backed up at 4PM each day, it completes about 4:40PM, leave for the day at 5PM- and that day's backup is done when I leave.

I bought 5 (only do the majority of work on weekdays) external hard drives.
Plug hard drive in in the morning. Runs at 4, I leave with it at 5.
I end up taking THAT DAY'S backup home with me.
Granted this may not work the best for you, you could schedule overnight.

That 40 minute backup (I'd have to check data size- I know it is under 100GB) takes 2 hours to restore.
2 hours is MUCH quicker vs:
Reinstall Windows
Update Windows
Reinstall Apps
Restore Data
Hope to God all your settings are correct...

2 hours is nothing.

I am personally working out some issues with the software myself (drive not ready errors), and Acronis assures me it is just a driver issue. Another huge feature is Universal Restore. I can restore it to 100% different hardware.
Which is great- built a cheap backup server. If main server fails- it should only take a few days to get the part in... running on weaker hardware for a few days is better than waiting for the part AND then reinstalling ;)
Anyway- working out driver issue- supposedly a driver isn't correct somewhere. It is an issue of finding WHAT driver it is, and taking note of it... I haven't gotten there yet.

That's worst-case.
I run RAID5 with a hotspare... so the most likely failure (hard drive) is protected against.
Anything else- I have an image, and backup server.
 
zacdl said:
Get TrueImage. I got the Windows Server version. It can do sector-by-sector backups WHILE BEING USED. Pretty slick system... I have mine backed up at 4PM each day, it completes about 4:40PM, leave for the day at 5PM- and that day's backup is done when I leave.

I bought 5 (only do the majority of work on weekdays) external hard drives.
Plug hard drive in in the morning. Runs at 4, I leave with it at 5.
I end up taking THAT DAY'S backup home with me.
Granted this may not work the best for you, you could schedule overnight.

That 40 minute backup (I'd have to check data size- I know it is under 100GB) takes 2 hours to restore.
2 hours is MUCH quicker vs:
Reinstall Windows
Update Windows
Reinstall Apps
Restore Data
Hope to God all your settings are correct...

2 hours is nothing.

I am personally working out some issues with the software myself (drive not ready errors), and Acronis assures me it is just a driver issue. Another huge feature is Universal Restore. I can restore it to 100% different hardware.
Which is great- built a cheap backup server. If main server fails- it should only take a few days to get the part in... running on weaker hardware for a few days is better than waiting for the part AND then reinstalling ;)
Anyway- working out driver issue- supposedly a driver isn't correct somewhere. It is an issue of finding WHAT driver it is, and taking note of it... I haven't gotten there yet.

That's worst-case.
I run RAID5 with a hotspare... so the most likely failure (hard drive) is protected against.
Anything else- I have an image, and backup server.
Click to expand...

not to steal the thread.. but.. have you ever had to use the true image backup to restore the complete OS and everything?

I also use trueimage on sbs 2003. every night i make a complete image of the entire system so that if the hdd dies, i can restore the entire system w/o having to reinstall from cd. I have never had a hdd die so i have never had a chance to test.

I also use shadow copy to make a snapshot every night. only about 20GB and is great for restoring individual files that people accidentally delete or whatever.

for a small business i think the toughest part is offsite. I have people working up until right before they leave for the day. By the time i can get a snapshot of the days work, everyone is gone from the office.
 
What do you guys do to backup your Domain Controllers? It only run one and it would be horrible if it died because every workstation would have to be redone and re-established to the "new" network once I got it up and running again.
 
LoStMaTt said:
What do you guys do to backup your Domain Controllers? It only run one and it would be horrible if it died because every workstation would have to be redone and re-established to the "new" network once I got it up and running again.
Click to expand...

You need at least one more, in my opinion having one DC is insane in a production environment. If you can't add another one, back up nightly and have an ASR disk handy, but you really really need another one.

For our data protection we use DFS to maintain copies of user data to a hotsite so in the event of failure users only experience slightly slower access to their data (they have to pull it off the WAN). We do a copy for some highly critical machines to our hotsite every night. We back up nightly to LTO's. We backup Exchange to older AIT tapes. The only real problem we've had is LTO drive failures, we've had 3 fail (2 LTO's and 1 LTO2) in the last year. So keep a spare on hand. For our backup program we use CA's Arcserv Backup, which works well for us. I like the sound of that TrueImage program mentioned above, I may have to look into it.
 
jcmuse said:
not to steal the thread.. but.. have you ever had to use the true image backup to restore the complete OS and everything?
Click to expand...

A test restore... yes. I end up with some "Drive Not Ready" errors though- Acronis swears up and down it is just a driver issue (haven't looked into it myself yet).
 
VeeDubbs said:
We use Tivoli - I like it a lot.
Click to expand...

Tivoli ...... wow. It has to be the worst I have ever used. We back up 800+ servers with it and it sucks on windows servers. Their support has been the worst and they can never solve my issues.
 
Baredor said:
We backup 400GB to a LTO3 nightly, Exchange fits neatly on a 72GB DAT (for now). And we do a weekly backup to disk on both as well.

Tapes are clunky, but mostly reliable in my limited experience. Hard disk backups and shadow copies make life much easier when users do something stupid. The combination of both works well for us and helps us sleep better. :)
Click to expand...

same. We use an LTO2 400gb tape drive on Ultra160 SCSI.. backup courtesy of Symantec (Veritas) BackupExec.

Excellent piece of software.
 
For corporate backup solutions / DR solutions. You should always start by identifying 2 things before you select the technologies you use....

1.) (RPO) Recovery Point Objective. (the amount of data you can loose, is it 5 seconds worth, 30 minutes worth, 1 business days worth ???? )

2.) (RTO) Recovery Time Objective. (the amount of time you have to restore your production services from scratch.)

After indentifying the above , you can start to determine what solutions will work...

A tape backup system will only offer RPO as frequently as you do backups....If you backup at 23:00 daily....but you server dies at 22:30...you will loose 23 1/2 hours of data.. Is that acceptable to your buinsess? if its e-mails, maybe, transactional from brokerage firm data.. no way.....all the orders your company recived in the past day? no way......

Defining RPO is very important, and it will allow you to communicate what managment what they expect to get for the money they spent on backup....

References to read...==>> two excellent guides from IBM concerning this topic (1000 pages worth!!)...must read if you are considering corperate backup solutions...

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246547.pdf
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redbooks/pdfs/sg246548.pdf
 
We've had nothing but trouble with the newest version of Backup Exec at my company. There appears to be some obscure conflict between it and MS Virtual Server 2005 that causes right-click to take ~1 minute and makes the backups take at least twice as long.

We still have no idea why this is happening, and Symantec has been pretty much worthless in terms of support. I personally prefer the Acronis products, though I have little experience with their server stuff.

As far as hardware goes, we have a backup server that is then backed up to external drives that get rotated offsite on a weekly basis.
 
The Bryophyte said:
We've had nothing but trouble with the newest version of Backup Exec at my company. There appears to be some obscure conflict between it and MS Virtual Server 2005 that causes right-click to take ~1 minute and makes the backups take at least twice as long.
Click to expand...

I've detested BE since 9.something...especially since Symantec bought them up and bloated up the package. Been on the search for a decent backup product for a while...fortunately I install Small Biz Server at a lot of my clients..and it's built in backup utility is satisfactory for me.

I plan on installing my first CDP appliance at a client soon... http://www.sonicwall.com/us/products/backup_and_recovery.html
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I've detested BE since 9.something...especially since Symantec bought them up and bloated up the package. Been on the search for a decent backup product for a while...fortunately I install Small Biz Server at a lot of my clients..and it's built in backup utility is satisfactory for me.

I plan on installing my first CDP appliance at a client soon... http://www.sonicwall.com/us/products/backup_and_recovery.html
Click to expand...

I've used Yosemite on the last two installs I've done because I agree 100% on your BE statement. The small business version is about half the cost of BE, plus it includes the open file option. Since working out the initial bugs in the backup schedule, I haven't had one failed backup in over three months. That's more than I could ever say with BE.
 
MorfiusX said:
I've used Yosemite on the last two installs I've done because I agree 100% on your BE statement..
Click to expand...

The couple of times I've come across that backup software...dunno...the interface was odd. HP often bundles it with their tape drives. Think for a while they were even rebranding it as "HP Stack" or something like that.
 
That must be HP ommiback.... well, Storage Data Protector 6....The express edition comes bundled with HP drives.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top