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Name: edokid
Hey everyone,
Everyone here's amazing so wanted to ask a question. Quick background:
I run Windows Server 2003. It has Active Directory with about 6 users. It has really 3 main uses. The first is file server, it stores our company files, quotes we send to customers and so on. This is probably right now 1gb worth of data. It will grow but I'd say most it would ever hit is 5gb. The second main role is it runs our Dynamics CRM 3.0 implementation which holds all our customer accounts. Right now there's about 500 records with opportunities, and it would probably grow but it's just an account, contact and opportunity. We don't save files or attachments or anything like that in there. The last role is VPN server which we use once in awhile for access from home.
I'm looking for a backup solution since I can't afford to lose everything. My one thought was to get a second hard drive and have the system create an image of the drive using North Ghost or True Image every single night. Obviously that's not the best since it's stored locally.
I know before tape backup used to be big so I was thinking of that, but not sure if it has any benefits now over using say DVD or what not. My other thing is I'm not sure how tape works at all in terms of backing up and recovering data. I was thinking do the second hard drive thing to have an image that I can fall back on quickly every night, then do some sort of external system that I can do nightly or weekly and remove from the office?
Any thoughts, thanks so much!
2nd drive should be mirrored to the first in case of drive failure not for images which would not do you any good if the drive dies.
You can hold more data on tape then dvd. I would recommend a tape backup system. You can start with just ntbackup and perhaps as budget allows move up to Backup Exec.
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Isn't it too late to mirror the drive now, since my server and everything is up and running on the first drive?
Why can't I image it, if I have it set to nightly at 3am create an image of the entire drive and write it to the second drive, I could restore that image to a new hard drive if the main drive ever failed?
I'll look into tape, I'm thinking that might be the best option as well, easier too.
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I hate tape it is more expensive, requires the right kind of environment for storage, it stretches and you have to catalog every thing. Worst of all I am lazy and hate to have to swap tapes all of the time.
I always recommend NAS or SANS drives. The problem is you need a remote site to set these up. Do you have a satlelite office that you can setup a VPN connection to? If not then there are web hosted sites that you can rent but depending on the type of data you may not be allowed to do this because of security. If that is a problem then there is a tool call TRUECRYPT which can also be scripted to encrypt your files after they have been backed up.
I would suggest you look into a free ware that comes with the Server Resource Kit, call ROBOCOPY which can be scripted and run through MS Task Scheduler.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...
There are many ways to skin a cat and this was my solution but it requires a bit of learning. An easy solution and I hate it but Symantec Backup Exec will do some of this for you.
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Thanks I'll look into that too. NAS would definitely be beneficial. I do have another location that I can VPN into but the problem is that both just use standard business DSL internet, so it's 7mbps download and 1mpbs upload so it's crazy slow for uploading. It would take too long to go that route.
That brings up a question on tape though, can they be reused? Like could I use a few and say backup Monday night, then Tuesday it just writes over that one and so on, then on Friday I take that tape home and store it off site? Then start again and say after a month, the ones brought home on Friday I bring back and use them again too?
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Yes but they stretch. Which means only so many times.
7Mb is fine because you schedule your backups at knight from 6PM to 6AM and I can almost guarantee that it will not take that long to backup.
Another solution is to setup a server at that site which replicates the files from the main server. This way when a file is changed on the main server it is replicated over to the backup server and then you just run the backup atknight to backup all the files from the off site server. Also, ROBOCOPY will only copy files that have changed so that the backups are faster.
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NAS is only a partial solution. To really do it right you mirror your live date to the nas then you backup to tape the contents of the nas. This is a standard setup when your data exceeds the time window [non production hours] for tape backup.
You solve the tape changing by using autoloaders.
Don't know where you get 'tape stretch' from. That is old knowledge an not applicable today. Everything has a mtbf [mean time before failure] and you set your tapes life to something less than the mtbf [you can do this in backup exec]
edokid we have 8 weeks of backups which means on the 9th week we overwrite the 1st set of tapes.
We do monthly golden backups which are not overwritten for a year.
We also have off site storage so last weeks tapes are off site and only if a restore is required [we use volume shadow for primary restores of user files] are the tapes brought back or if its their time to be overwritten.Do understand you either need to securely store your tapes or use backup software that can encrypt them.
Tape, imho, is still the primary backup media to use. You just have to use it correctly and not base your preferances on opinion but on what the technology delivers.
If you really want to get into critical analysis you would need to list each media, its capacity, ability to span, mtbf, ability to encrypt, mechanical or static and tranport.
For example nas alone means you have the same risk as your server ie. drives are mechanical and will die. If you have ever lost both mirrored disks at the same time you know what I mean. You lost your server and your nas you are dead... unless you backuped to tape. All part of a DR plan and how much you want to spend :-)
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Thanks wanderer that makes sense. Do tape drives just back up whatever data I want or do they do a complete image? Meaning if the system fails, am I going to be using the tape to just restore my CRM and so on backup, or would it restore an entire system if the hard drive failed?
I'm guessing its the first part and only partial system. What I'm thinking of most likely dong is adding a 2nd hard drive and having it image the main drive nightly or what not, so I can always restore the image should the drive fail, or I have any major issues with a config. Then I'll get a tape backup system and have it do that nightly, or even weekly based on how I want to run with it, and then I'll store those off site.
There's nothing really security sensitive on our systems, so not sure if you just mean I need to encrypt them should they be stolen from my backup location or what not. If the backup software I have offers that then I'll enable it for sure.
When it comes to tapes, is it a generic standard, or do you have to buy specific tapes for specific machines? ie Sony tapes for Sony backup drives and so on?
Thanks so much!
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Generic tape backups require you install the OS and the backup software then do a full restore. Your backups would include system state. This will put you back to when the backup was made.
Images are different than backups. They are a picture of everything. For example a restored image can restore the master boot record and partition table. Tape backup can't read those and hence can't restore them. Both have their advantages.
Software like Backup Exec has setups to do bare metal restores but they were expensive and not needed in my organization.
Nice idea about the second drive and imaging but you need to look at the whole picture which starts at the lowest level and goes up.
For example I would not image a disk nightly. I, as a stardard configuration, Raid 1 [mirror] the OS and Raid 5, 0+1 or 10 the data [usually Raid 10 for sql/exchange/highend high usage servers]. I always provide hot spares. If a drive dies I am still in production and operational. I can take the system down after hours to replace the drive and, in my case with hot spares just initialize a hot spare since the raid card automatically grabbed the hot spare and raided it so there were no missing drives.
Your 2nd drive with image means downtime right then and there.
Part of my job is supporting a hospital so with Hipaa we need to encrypt our backups for off site transport. If you don't have financial information or customer information that could be used by cyber criminals ['idenity thief] then no need to encrypt.
We do full backups. I don't mess with incrementals or differencials anymore. We just go to larger tapes if going beyond one tape per server.
BTW tapes are advertized like 60/120 or 120/240. Usually the smaller number is in fine print and the larger number is bolded to make you think you get that much. You DON'T. The first number is without compression. The higher number is with compression on a 2:1 basis. I RARELY have seen 2 to 1 compression. Usually it is much less. I only go by the uncompressed numbers. They are realistic.
I have used sony/maxell tapes in ibm and quantum drives so that does not appear to matter. It has been a very long time since I had a tape fail.
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Thanks for the help that's great. Just to clarify a few things. I don't want raid since I'm looking at this more from a "I installed something wrong or changed something now I can't log in, so I want to restore back to yesterday's state" versus, my hard drive just failed and I need to restore. Our data is of course important, but if my server dies, we can go a day or two without it and keep working, so even if it took me all day to restore my image from the second drive, that's not a huge deal, unlike in your situation where you can't have the downtime.
Reason I was asking about the different drive types was because I've checked some on ebay and they all seem different. We're a small company so can't afford right now to spend tons on implementing backup, as we just moved offices and I have a million expenses. The second drive and imaging to that is easy, I have the software and I already have so I can do that asap, it's more just the secondary backup if both drives fail, or if they're stolen or so on. There's a lot of very inexpensive tape drives on ebay IDE internal but they say 4/8GB which sounds really small. Am I able to select what I want to backup to tape, or does it have to be full drive? Just thinking my data is definitely under 4GB and will be for probably a year or more, so might be an inexpensive way to start with backing up offsite for now.
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ide backup units have poor performance. I would not recommend them.
Given your situation Mosy or other online backup should work for you, as would your image to a second disk.
Best of luck in your endeavors
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Every idea above is good. You will have to pick as there is no "best" plan.
You can get a 1Tb usb device that can handle NTbackup wtih ease even remote. Buy 2 of them. Use one each week.
Your solution may require a multipart scheme. A simple image like Ghost, G4U, Acronis or live cd with DD might be one part (like clonezilla)
Second is a daily backup plan. The cost of an autochanger is way high. Remote storage or raid arrays may be a solution. If you can get it all on one tape then fine but like I said a usb device may suit your needs.
Some people use Rsync to keep data up to date.
Be aware that your system may fail and you may have to purchase a different hardware.
See also rich copy the replacement for robocopy.
Playing to the angels
Les Paul (1915-2009)
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Thanks for the help again. Come to think of it, I can probably buy a lot of 5 2GB usb memory keys or something on ebay for less than getting a tape drive anyway and just change those up daily.
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Just a quick question actually wanderer, when you say IDE has poor performance, in what sense? Again my thing is that we're a very small company, and doing the nightly image will 99.9% of the time be sufficient for me. I just want the off site backup just incase. We don't rely on the server to function, so if my server died right now and I lost everything, it would definitely be annoying but we wouldn't be dead in the water or anything. I only ask because again the IDE tape drives seem really inexpensive for now just to give it a shot or whatever.
Is it unreliable in that sometimes it just won't back up, or does it make bad backups or?
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Ones I worked with years ago [been doing scsi ever since] were simply very slow. It took forever just to backup a gig. I found the software also to unreliable that came with the drives.
Always remember a backup that is not tested [we do test restores of every backup we do] is not a backup. Not testing backups will result in when you need them they don't contain the data or they don't restore.
Been there. And it wasn't fun :-(
memory sticks can fail at any point in time no matter what stats concerning them are posted on the net. They are transfer media [like a floppy disk] not storage media.
Case in point; guy stored all his personal tax files on usb. It died. He lost everything. Cost him a bundle in penalities.
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Great thanks again. Last question, if I buy a drive that says 10/20gb I understand that's 10gb uncompressed 20 compressed. Can I use a 4/8 tape in it or does it have to be 10/20? Just because I found a good deal on 4/8 tapes which are much cheaper than the 10/20s and my data right now is about 750mb. Thanks!
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You would check the drive stats on the web to see if it supports using smaller capacity tapes.
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Just can't seem to find it online, I got a good deal on a Seagate 10/20gb one, it said the model is STT220000A but all I find on google is places that are selling it.
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wasn't too hard to find.
http://www.superwarehouse.com/Certa...
says
Media Read/Write: Travan 20
Media Read Only: Travan 8You can only read 4/8 not write to them
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