best backup software solution?

[lockmac]

Hi guys. Just wandering if you could suggest a backup solution for me.

It is a Windows 2003 SBS server with roughly 40gb of data to be backup at night time.

I am just wandering what is the best way to backup? Should we backup onto some external HDD?

What is the best software for this? Ideally, a piece of software that has email alerts or something similar to notify if backups werent completed.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks guys

 

[mikeyes]

2003 SBS has a decent backup solution built in. It uses the Windows Backup software but its been integrated into the SBS control panel. Run a small wizard and then you just forget it. I would recommend backing up to an external hard drive. I like to setup most of my clients with 2 external drives. They can rotate then once a week and keep one of the drives offsite. External drives are cheap these days.

If you do not want to use the built in software then I would suggest SyncBackPro (http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html). Very powerful and not too expensive.

 

[AnnonUSA]

Backup Exec....Hands down...not very cheap, but very effective....Will backup Sharepoint / Exchange / Everything on SBS.

Will backup to USB Drives, Tape, HDD whatever. Easy to use, easy to install, easy to learn.

 

[techmanc]

What type of backup solution you looking for? Do you need file or imaging?

 

[mooseracing]

Originally posted by: AnnonUSA
Backup Exec....Hands down...not very cheap, but very effective....Will backup Sharepoint / Exchange / Everything on SBS.

Will backup to USB Drives, Tape, HDD whatever. Easy to use, easy to install, easy to learn.

Haha, ever try using those SharePoint backups with 1000's of sites?

The built in backup to SharePoint is about the best hands down, besides avepoint.

Symantec is OK if you want to reinstall windows and then restore your backups. It can take a couple days to get your DC back to all its settings before you can restore backups.

We use a combo of Syamntec and once a month take complete server images with Acronis.

If you just want backups, use the built in Windows one, if you need exchagne granularity, get symantec or acronis.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: AnnonUSA
Backup Exec....Hands down...not very cheap, but very effective....Will backup Sharepoint / Exchange / Everything on SBS.

Will backup to USB Drives, Tape, HDD whatever. Easy to use, easy to install, easy to learn.

I don't understand why backup has to be costly. It seems to me that it's not that complicated. My perspective is not very technical. I know rudimentary DOS, have a fair idea of some of the issues. Until now, I've been just copy/paste in Windows Explorer (running XP Pro now), but I figure it's not necessary and really is wasteful to copy over files that haven't changed since the last backup. How fancy does a program have to be to ignore files that haven't changed (i.e. date stamp is the same)? When I do my copy/paste I usually get dialogs popping up asking me if I really want to write over some file or another, and to me that's just a problem because I have to attend the affair until those things stop happening. There must be simple effective and free utilities (or maybe Windows backup can do this even) that will do this. I'm usually backing up to drives on my own system, nowadays to a USB external HD, which I usually don't turn on until and unless I want to backup (or restore). Heck, I think I could write a program in Visual FoxPro that would accomplish all this, but I figure it would be reinventing the wheel.

 

[techmanc]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: AnnonUSA
Backup Exec....Hands down...not very cheap, but very effective....Will backup Sharepoint / Exchange / Everything on SBS.

Will backup to USB Drives, Tape, HDD whatever. Easy to use, easy to install, easy to learn.

I don't understand why backup has to be costly. It seems to me that it's not that complicated. My perspective is not very technical. I know rudimentary DOS, have a fair idea of some of the issues. Until now, I've been just copy/paste in Windows Explorer (running XP Pro now), but I figure it's not necessary and really is wasteful to copy over files that haven't changed since the last backup. How fancy does a program have to be to ignore files that haven't changed (i.e. date stamp is the same)? When I do my copy/paste I usually get dialogs popping up asking me if I really want to write over some file or another, and to me that's just a problem because I have to attend the affair until those things stop happening. There must be simple effective and free utilities (or maybe Windows backup can do this even) that will do this. I'm usually backing up to drives on my own system, nowadays to a USB external HD, which I usually don't turn on until and unless I want to backup (or restore). Heck, I think I could write a program in Visual FoxPro that would accomplish all this, but I figure it would be reinventing the wheel.

It can be very simple or very complicated depending on your backup needs. Your falls on the simple side Windows Backup should serve you fine. Take a look at the link here to explain backup types more.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backup_types

 

[Nothinman]

It seems to me that it's not that complicated.

Until you start to consider the special cases like:

Open files. On most unix systems this isn't a big deal because you can open and read any file whether it's open or not but on Windows you can't easily open a file that's already opened and locked. And on any system you want to be at least semi-sure that no writes happen to that file while you back it up otherwise your copy isn't valid.

Special files like databases. Just about every database out there does it's own memory and data management for performance so you can't be sure that the files on disk really represent the data in the database without forcing the database to flush everything to disk and not do any updates until after you get your backup.

Exchange is a whole beast of it's own. Individual mailboxes, single instance storage, public folders, address books, etc. It's a huge mess and there's no nice way to back it up.

And probably other things that I'm forgetting about right now. Even the basic idea of backing up files on an in-use system without shutting it down is a PITA because of filesystem caching and writes happening during the backup. That's one of the primary reasons things like LVM snapshots, VSS, etc were created.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Until you start to consider the special cases like:

I guess most of these complications are in network environments. In my case, I have a network but it's seldom that I have more than my main system running when I do a backup. I have a database system, but it's very easy to shut it down before backing up. I guess my backup problems are very easily addressed compared to many, at least currently. I'd like to have my data accessible from all my systems, but am unsure about how I'd do that and a major concern in setting up such a system is performance. Cost too, of course.

 

[Nothinman]

I guess most of these complications are in network environments.

Or just in environments where you want things to be available all of the time, although that does imply a network most of the time.

I have a database system, but it's very easy to shut it down before backing up.

But if other people used that database, even locally, you probably wouldn't want it to be unavailable while the backup is running. Of course if you're the one sitting at the computer while you're doing the backups then that's not an issue either.

I guess my backup problems are very easily addressed compared to many, at least currently.

Yea, for a small home network something like copy/paste, xcopy, etc can work but you still have the chance of leaving Excel running and getting a corrupt spreadsheet if you're not careful.

I'd like to have my data accessible from all my systems, but am unsure about how I'd do that and a major concern in setting up such a system is performance. Cost too, of course.

At the simplest level just put it somewhere and share it, then the other computers can map a drive there and get to it. If you want to actually build a box to be a server to centralize all of your data then that's a bit more work but doesn't require much in the way of hardware. None actually if you've got a spare, old computer laying around.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I guess most of these complications are in network environments.

Or just in environments where you want things to be available all of the time, although that does imply a network most of the time.

I have a database system, but it's very easy to shut it down before backing up.

But if other people used that database, even locally, you probably wouldn't want it to be unavailable while the backup is running. Of course if you're the one sitting at the computer while you're doing the backups then that's not an issue either.

I guess my backup problems are very easily addressed compared to many, at least currently.

Yea, for a small home network something like copy/paste, xcopy, etc can work but you still have the chance of leaving Excel running and getting a corrupt spreadsheet if you're not careful.

I'd like to have my data accessible from all my systems, but am unsure about how I'd do that and a major concern in setting up such a system is performance. Cost too, of course.

At the simplest level just put it somewhere and share it, then the other computers can map a drive there and get to it. If you want to actually build a box to be a server to centralize all of your data then that's a bit more work but doesn't require much in the way of hardware. None actually if you've got a spare, old computer laying around.

I do have that computer but I'm very energy conservation conscious and if I do it this way will build a very low power draw server. I hear I can have ~20-30 watts. Most of the time it will be idle, which should help with the low energy use. My concern is performance. The main things are my email client and it's data and the data in my database system. The performance in those on a local machine is one thing, and I would hope that I wouldn't see much degradation (if any) when having the data on a server. I guess it depends on the speed of my router, a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless.

 

[Nothinman]

I do have that computer but I'm very energy conservation conscious and if I do it this way will build a very low power draw server. I hear I can have ~20-30 watts. Most of the time it will be idle, which should help with the low energy use. My concern is performance. The main things are my email client and it's data and the data in my database system. The performance in those on a local machine is one thing, and I would hope that I wouldn't see much degradation (if any) when having the data on a server. I guess it depends on the speed of my router, a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless.

Well for the mail if you setup an IMAP server performance will be fine. The first time you open a folder on the IMAP server it'll download all of the headers which might take a bit depending on how many messages are there but after that it'll be fine. I personally don't think I could live without my own mail server, I'm too much of a control freak. I use a gmail account to get the mail so that there's no downtime if my home cable goes out or something so I just have fetchmail run to download my gmail every few minutes. It's a bit of work to setup but I can switch mail clients without worrying about backup/restore, import/export, etc as long as the new client does IMAP.

The database is hard to say since you don't say what kind of database it is. If it's like an Access MDB then that might be a problem performance-wise. And even if it's not and you a lot of large queries then the wifi might be a problem.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I do have that computer but I'm very energy conservation conscious and if I do it this way will build a very low power draw server. I hear I can have ~20-30 watts. Most of the time it will be idle, which should help with the low energy use. My concern is performance. The main things are my email client and it's data and the data in my database system. The performance in those on a local machine is one thing, and I would hope that I wouldn't see much degradation (if any) when having the data on a server. I guess it depends on the speed of my router, a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless.

Well for the mail if you setup an IMAP server performance will be fine. The first time you open a folder on the IMAP server it'll download all of the headers which might take a bit depending on how many messages are there but after that it'll be fine. I personally don't think I could live without my own mail server, I'm too much of a control freak. I use a gmail account to get the mail so that there's no downtime if my home cable goes out or something so I just have fetchmail run to download my gmail every few minutes. It's a bit of work to setup but I can switch mail clients without worrying about backup/restore, import/export, etc as long as the new client does IMAP.

The database is hard to say since you don't say what kind of database it is. If it's like an Access MDB then that might be a problem performance-wise. And even if it's not and you a lot of large queries then the wifi might be a problem.

Actually in terms of the mail client I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. What I use is Forte Agent, and I've had it running for a long time. It's a "3rd party" email/newsgroup program and I'm using an older version, 1.92xxx or so. It's nice in that I never have to install it anywhere. It's completely self contained and writes nothing to the registry. You just create a shortcut to agent.exe and you're up and running. It's beautiful, configurable, has loads of options. Doesn't support HTML, however, but Outlook is (I'm told, have heard, etc.) a security nightmare, so in that way Agent is nice. I sometimes do searches in folders that have thousands of posts, sorts and stuff like that and performance is an issue there. If I had the whole Agent tree including its data (over 1 GB for me now) on a server connected to my wireless router I don't know if the performance would be the same as it is when run locally on my machines. What I'm doing now is occasionally copying the Agent tree from my main PC to my laptop. When I download email from my ISP to my laptop, I leave the messages on the ISP's server so that my desktop will get them later. This means that my desktop will always have all my email. Next time I copy all the Agent data to the laptop, the laptop will be up to date. It's kind of cumbersome but works reasonably well. I do similar things for my database system which is in Visual FoxPro. It's even more cumbersome with the database stuff because I can't alter anything on the laptop and have the updates populate on my main PC unless I send myself an email or something... cumbersome indeed! Anyway, it's not drivng me crazy, it's just not what it would be with a server based system, assuming the performance issues are negligible.

 

[Nothinman]

Well since Forte is using a local store then putting it on the server will affect performance. If Forte supports IMAP then that would be an option, but otherwise you're kinda screwed if your only connectivity is wifi. The same goes for VFoxPro, the latency is higher over wifi so even if the throughput isn't bad it'll feel a bit slower.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

WHS, but isn't exactly just a software solution. If I can't use WHS for some reason, I use True Image Echo Workstation.

 

[techmanc]

Originally posted by: lockmac
Hi guys. Just wandering if you could suggest a backup solution for me.

It is a Windows 2003 SBS server with roughly 40gb of data to be backup at night time.

I am just wandering what is the best way to backup? Should we backup onto some external HDD?

Get a Antec MX-1 ESATA/USB2.0 enclosure with your choise of SATA hard drive and use ESATA if you can for fastest connection

What is the best software for this? Ideally, a piece of software that has email alerts or something similar to notify if backups werent completed.

I prefer ShadowProctect Desktop 3.3 (new version does 64bit OS and Windows Server 2008) over Acronis True Echo Workstation but both will do the job.

Any advice appreciated.

Thanks guys

Trial link for ShadowProtect Desktop 3.3

http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/files/

 

[heymrdj]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I do have that computer but I'm very energy conservation conscious and if I do it this way will build a very low power draw server. I hear I can have ~20-30 watts. Most of the time it will be idle, which should help with the low energy use. My concern is performance. The main things are my email client and it's data and the data in my database system. The performance in those on a local machine is one thing, and I would hope that I wouldn't see much degradation (if any) when having the data on a server. I guess it depends on the speed of my router, a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless.

Well for the mail if you setup an IMAP server performance will be fine. The first time you open a folder on the IMAP server it'll download all of the headers which might take a bit depending on how many messages are there but after that it'll be fine. I personally don't think I could live without my own mail server, I'm too much of a control freak. I use a gmail account to get the mail so that there's no downtime if my home cable goes out or something so I just have fetchmail run to download my gmail every few minutes. It's a bit of work to setup but I can switch mail clients without worrying about backup/restore, import/export, etc as long as the new client does IMAP.

The database is hard to say since you don't say what kind of database it is. If it's like an Access MDB then that might be a problem performance-wise. And even if it's not and you a lot of large queries then the wifi might be a problem.

Actually in terms of the mail client I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. What I use is Forte Agent, and I've had it running for a long time. It's a "3rd party" email/newsgroup program and I'm using an older version, 1.92xxx or so. It's nice in that I never have to install it anywhere. It's completely self contained and writes nothing to the registry. You just create a shortcut to agent.exe and you're up and running. It's beautiful, configurable, has loads of options. Doesn't support HTML, however, but Outlook is (I'm told, have heard, etc.) a security nightmare, so in that way Agent is nice. I sometimes do searches in folders that have thousands of posts, sorts and stuff like that and performance is an issue there. If I had the whole Agent tree including its data (over 1 GB for me now) on a server connected to my wireless router I don't know if the performance would be the same as it is when run locally on my machines. What I'm doing now is occasionally copying the Agent tree from my main PC to my laptop. When I download email from my ISP to my laptop, I leave the messages on the ISP's server so that my desktop will get them later. This means that my desktop will always have all my email. Next time I copy all the Agent data to the laptop, the laptop will be up to date. It's kind of cumbersome but works reasonably well. I do similar things for my database system which is in Visual FoxPro. It's even more cumbersome with the database stuff because I can't alter anything on the laptop and have the updates populate on my main PC unless I send myself an email or something... cumbersome indeed! Anyway, it's not drivng me crazy, it's just not what it would be with a server based system, assuming the performance issues are negligible.

On a side note, that's nothing. My outlook PST backup is 16GB. 45,000 emails plus calendars. Then there's the Business Contact Manager backup and what not.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: heymrdj

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I do have that computer but I'm very energy conservation conscious and if I do it this way will build a very low power draw server. I hear I can have ~20-30 watts. Most of the time it will be idle, which should help with the low energy use. My concern is performance. The main things are my email client and it's data and the data in my database system. The performance in those on a local machine is one thing, and I would hope that I wouldn't see much degradation (if any) when having the data on a server. I guess it depends on the speed of my router, a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 wireless.

Well for the mail if you setup an IMAP server performance will be fine. The first time you open a folder on the IMAP server it'll download all of the headers which might take a bit depending on how many messages are there but after that it'll be fine. I personally don't think I could live without my own mail server, I'm too much of a control freak. I use a gmail account to get the mail so that there's no downtime if my home cable goes out or something so I just have fetchmail run to download my gmail every few minutes. It's a bit of work to setup but I can switch mail clients without worrying about backup/restore, import/export, etc as long as the new client does IMAP.

The database is hard to say since you don't say what kind of database it is. If it's like an Access MDB then that might be a problem performance-wise. And even if it's not and you a lot of large queries then the wifi might be a problem.

Actually in terms of the mail client I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. What I use is Forte Agent, and I've had it running for a long time. It's a "3rd party" email/newsgroup program and I'm using an older version, 1.92xxx or so. It's nice in that I never have to install it anywhere. It's completely self contained and writes nothing to the registry. You just create a shortcut to agent.exe and you're up and running. It's beautiful, configurable, has loads of options. Doesn't support HTML, however, but Outlook is (I'm told, have heard, etc.) a security nightmare, so in that way Agent is nice. I sometimes do searches in folders that have thousands of posts, sorts and stuff like that and performance is an issue there. If I had the whole Agent tree including its data (over 1 GB for me now) on a server connected to my wireless router I don't know if the performance would be the same as it is when run locally on my machines. What I'm doing now is occasionally copying the Agent tree from my main PC to my laptop. When I download email from my ISP to my laptop, I leave the messages on the ISP's server so that my desktop will get them later. This means that my desktop will always have all my email. Next time I copy all the Agent data to the laptop, the laptop will be up to date. It's kind of cumbersome but works reasonably well. I do similar things for my database system which is in Visual FoxPro. It's even more cumbersome with the database stuff because I can't alter anything on the laptop and have the updates populate on my main PC unless I send myself an email or something... cumbersome indeed! Anyway, it's not drivng me crazy, it's just not what it would be with a server based system, assuming the performance issues are negligible.

On a side note, that's nothing. My outlook PST backup is 16GB. 45,000 emails plus calendars. Then there's the Business Contact Manager backup and what not.

Are you saying that you have your outlook PST on a server accessible from more than one system and you are not experiencing performance issues?

 

[Red Squirrel]

At home I use a series of rsync scripts, though I've been wanting to code myself a better solution that uses rsync in back end as I lack consistency. Some of the systems are samba shares that are temp mounted, others are direct rsync etc.

With ssh public keys you can automate it quite nicely. I also have a backup server that mirrors my machines every now and then so if a drive craps out I have a full backup.

The issue with rsnyc is it wont delete full folders if it got deleted in the source. It's an issue I've been trying to overcome but I may need to get into the source code to solve it.

 

[heymrdj]

No no, the PST is local lol.