Enterprise Backup Solution

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BigD1108

Limp Gawd
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Nov 6, 2008
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We're looking at putting together a new backup solution for one of our clients and I wanted to see what the rest of you guys were doing from a backup perspective.

The client's environment includes 4 ESXi hosts with a total of 29 virtual machines and some shared storage courtesy of 4 HP SANs. Currently, they are utilizing vRanger Pro to to do full backups of their VMs to a CIFS share on a Server 2003 backup server at their fiber-connected DR site in a different city.

Once the VMDKs are on the backup server, Backup Exec 2010 handles the backups, which go to an old Quantum Scalar 50 tape library for offsite rotation. BE also handles the few SQL databases they have as well as the Exchange DB. Handful of laptops are backed up with Symantec DLO.

Currently, backups are about 875GB per day, uncompressed. Daily change rate is low (<5%), so I'd like some deduplication/compression support.

Ideally, we'd like to eliminate the tape storage all together and move to a standalone NAS of some sort for weekly offsite rotations. Bonus points if we can decommission the backup server as well.

It'd be awesome to find some sort of an "all in one" appliance that includes storage, supports VM backups, Exchange, SQL, and doesn't cost a million dollars. :)

What are you guys doing in your environments?
 
I've seen a few different done

Veeam - Commvault
Backup Exec
Backup Exec - EMC Data Domain
EMC Networker - EMC Data Domain
Unitrends

I would have to say out of everything I've seen Unitrends seems to be my favorite
 
You might want to look at Novastor's NovaBACKUP Datacenter product as it would be an all-in-one solution for exactly what you're looking to do and a much more friendly support / licensing package compared to the others. --- www.novastor.com
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. I have Sales demos scheduled with my EMC guy, Unitrends, and NovaSTOR now.....should be a fun afternoon of Webex sessions. :)
 
Take a look at Arkeia as well. My company just started a partnership with them, and their appliance and/or vAppliance might fit the bill. www.arkeia.com
 
Have brought most of our larger mission critical clients to DattoBackup.

Local Siris appliance sits onsite, takes full image snapshots of the server in VMDK format...at intervals you select. Keeps about 1 months worth locally.

If a physical server has failure...you can "boot up" the most recent backup in the appliance and have it avail on the network as a service..within about 15 minutes.

Syncs offsite to east and west coast data centers. If your office building burns down..thus the local Siris appliance...you call their support and they "mount" your servers most recent backup VMDK files in the cloud..and make them avail to you via RDP and/or VPN in about 2 hours.

When you purchase new servers to replace your dead ones....they have a cool push to different bare metal technology.
 
The fact is that most backup software will work for you. The devil is in the details and and configuration.

Webex is nice, but you really need on site demo equipment you can use for at least a couple weeks.
 
I have used a number of the options above. One of my new favorites is the NSB solution, Netapp Integrated Syncsort Backup, with their instant virtualization / instant recovery. It does cost a little to get into considering you have to buy a NetApp SAN to store the backups on, but it is an awesome solution.
 
Yeah, it seems that a wide variety of backup solutions will do what we want, it's a matter of finding the correct one for our environment.

Just got off a Webex with Unitrends - I was super-impressed with it in terms of ease of management, and it is an all-in-one unit, which is a plus.

To provide some more information, we're looking at $30-40,000 price range for this solution.
 
LOL I should be giving out my name for some sales stuff for Unitrends.. The company I use to work for still sells them to this day. The sales lady I worked with is AWESOME..
 
BigD1108 said:
Yeah, it seems that a wide variety of backup solutions will do what we want, it's a matter of finding the correct one for our environment.

Just got off a Webex with Unitrends - I was super-impressed with it in terms of ease of management, and it is an all-in-one unit, which is a plus.

To provide some more information, we're looking at $30-40,000 price range for this solution.
Click to expand...

The fact you have archival options is a plus too. Useing another DPU to send to another datacenter or putting on it e-sata to take off site is a plus too.

They have a 30 or 60 day demo of their virtual appliance (Their virtual appliance is no different software wise than the physical)... Download it and play with it
 
I can attest to how awesome DataDomain equipment is, but if I recall correctly, it won't be anywhere near your price range.
 
AppAssure will do everything you want.
It has built in dedup and compression, and can backup to hard disk, san, nas, etc. It will do replication for offsite backups also.
Instead of running daily backup jobs, it takes a full image once, then takes snapshots with what data has changed. You can set it to take snap shots every 15 minutes for stuff that changes often and daily snapshots for servers that rarely change. You then setup how long you want those snap shots to be kept, like hourly for x days, daily for Y days, weekly for z weeks, and so on. If you have enough space you can have hourly changes from months or even years ago.
It also has a really simply licensing model. You license your ESXi hosts, and all vm's and features are covered that run on that machine. No additional cost for how many exchange, sql, file, sharepoint, servers you have on that host.
 
calvinj said:
The fact you have archival options is a plus too. Useing another DPU to send to another datacenter or putting on it e-sata to take off site is a plus too.

They have a 30 or 60 day demo of their virtual appliance (Their virtual appliance is no different software wise than the physical)... Download it and play with it
Click to expand...


Yeah, the archival feature is a big plus for us based on how we currently do backups for our other clients.

I have downloaded the virtual appliance and should have some time to play with it on Friday, time permitting. I'm also expecting a call from Sales shortly, so hopefully the pricing is at least somewhat near our budget.
 
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feffrey said:
AppAssure will do everything you want.
Click to expand...

I will be taking a hard look at AppAssure - we are an MSP, and use Kaseya heavily so AppAssure's integration with Kaseya would not only work well for this customer, but potentially some of our other clients as well.
 
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