Backup solution for Windows Server and Windows clients?

lumencreative · 1 Jan 2020 at 18:36

So, after some first class advice about which drives to buy for my incoming HP DL380 G8 server, I thought I'd get some advice on the next piece of the puzzle....configuration and backup.

I originally planned to buy a Synology NAS as a backup appliance to backup our entire network but after making a booboo with the server I bought, I no longer have the cash available...I also realise that I have a perfectly good Dell T320 that is being replaced with the incoming HP server so why not use that as a backup server?

I've had a look around online and it looks like Veeam might be a worthwhile backup solution (maybe even their free version) but I just wanted to gauge your thoughts and experience on what a good option would be. Here are the requirements I have...

Needs to be able to backup the main server (regardless of whether I choose to go down the vm route or keep it as a single physical server instance).
Needs to be able to backup each windows client in the company.
I did wonder whether I could use Windows Server to backup the client pc's to the main server, then just back that up as part of the 'server' backup but a full & proper backup of each client pc would be better I think as it would make restoring a single client pc much easier.
Needs to be incremental backups.
Needs to be able to sync with an offsite physical backup (i.e. a Synology or something at my house) or something like Dropbox.

Also, is it possible to run Veeam, or whatever software is recommended on Windows 10 Pro rather than Windows Server (just to keep costs down)?

lumencreative · 1 Jan 2020 at 18:57

BIG EDIT, sorry I should have pointed out that I have access to a NFR license for Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 but this is only for 12 months so I still need to base my decision based on the future/ongoing cost, etc

ShadowMan · 4 Jan 2020 at 02:11

Why are you backing up clients? Is the data not all held on server? It sounds like you have very little budget. Veeam is a great product and we use it extensively to backup our VM estate and the odd physical server occasionally if we need one backed up via Veeam Agent but cheap it isn’t.

Have you calculated how much disk you need for backups? Are you aware of the restrictions for the free Veeam product?

Are you keeping the T320 server under maintenance incase something goes pop? What are your plans if a disk fails or something worse? I have had a mainboard and CPU fail on DL360 G8s in the last 3 years. HP support dealt with it same day.

How are you connecting to offsite storage? Have you considered renting Veeam Cloud Connect storage for offsite? Gives web facing data storage for holding backups. Can’t restore offsite but does get the data away.

More than happy to lend an opinion. I look after our companies infrastructure and DR including contracts with our external providers.

Have you got an overall budget and project scope with defined objectives for this? Have you set RTO and RPO yet?

lumencreative · 4 Jan 2020 at 12:12

ShadowMan said:
Why are you backing up clients? Is the data not all held on server? It sounds like you have very little budget. Veeam is a great product and we use it extensively to backup our VM estate and the odd physical server occasionally if we need one backed up via Veeam Agent but cheap it isn’t.

Have you calculated how much disk you need for backups? Are you aware of the restrictions for the free Veeam product?

Are you keeping the T320 server under maintenance incase something goes pop? What are your plans if a disk fails or something worse? I have had a mainboard and CPU fail on DL360 G8s in the last 3 years. HP support dealt with it same day.

How are you connecting to offsite storage? Have you considered renting Veeam Cloud Connect storage for offsite? Gives web facing data storage for holding backups. Can’t restore offsite but does get the data away.

More than happy to lend an opinion. I look after our companies infrastructure and DR including contracts with our external providers.

Have you got an overall budget and project scope with defined objectives for this? Have you set RTO and RPO yet?

Thanks for your comment.

With regards backing up the clients. Our current setup (using the Dell T320) has folder redirection setup so EVERYTHING is held on the server. I like this because I can log into any pc in the company and my documents/desktop/downloads are all there. However, it makes even our high spec computers feel slow on occasion, so I was considering ditching folder redirection and therefore would need to backup the clients individually.

The free license I have for Veeam is fully functional but it’s only free for the first 12 months. There are no limitations on it. I don’t have a massive budget at the moment because we are trying to tie the network upgrade in with moving premises, so have to install all new cabling as well as buying the server, drives, etc.

I have calculated how much disk space we will need and will be putting adequate drives in the T320 to cope with the backups, in a RAID10 configuration. I’ll also be keeping spare drives on the shelf for both the T320 and our main server in case of disk failure.

The Dell won’t be under maintenance as warranty ran out and Dell wanted more for the maintenance that we originally paid for the server. Our new main server (the HP DL380p Gen8) won’t be under maintenance either but we will have a complete second DL380p in the rack to strip for parts should anything go wrong (given that you can buy the DL380p for a couple of hundred pounds it’s a no brainier).

I will add that I’m quite tech savvy and was a network engineer in a former life but never dealt with the backup side of things.

I’ve not thought a great deal about offsite backup just yet as I figure it’s more important to get an on-site backup sorted before looking at offsite as obviously the offsite backup will be dependant on what I do onsite.

ShadowMan · 4 Jan 2020 at 12:25

That’s fair enough then. If you have the kit and are happy with risks of no warranty then that is up to you as it’s a business decision. Fully appreciate the warranty costs in old kit. We had an old NetApp that we were given by a parent company. NetApp wanted more than cost of new SAN for a warranty as it had lapsed and they wanted us to pay for the missing years that had already gone by. It went in the skip.

I would suggest you give Veeam a go. Set it up on your Dell and it can either pull from HyperV or direct via Agent. I would keep everything on the server and use folder redirects and mapped drives to store the data. If you want quick restore of a desktop then take a single backup image of it with nothing on it so you can bare metal restore it then reconnect to live server data.

Veeam will do the incremental backups and can compress your data. Decide if you having multi VM first and if so keep both VMs in 1 job. Veeam operates dedupe per job rather than across estate like some other products. Will save you a bit of space. You can tell Veeam to keep a file per VM anyway which keeps from having enormous files for multi VM backup.

Best bet is to try it. When you are ready for offsite check out rented VCC space. It’s easy to use. Buy an account. Put details into Veeam as a repository and setup the job. It will work with just an internet link. No VPNs to worry about and is fairly rapid depending on link speed and host provider. Just be mindful of that first full seed. We are switching provider and are In the middle of a 44Tb seed across our 200mbit link. It’s taking a while to get synced up and get dailies done.

lumencreative · 4 Jan 2020 at 13:21

Thanks again. I understand there is risk involved with not having hardware under maintenance, and our Dell was under warranty when we purchased it (which we actually utilised when the power supply packed in).

Will have a play with Veeam (I’ll download the trial first and play around with it on two desktop pcs to learn how it works.

Do you have a recommendation of a provider for Cloud Connect storage?

Thanks again

ShadowMan · 4 Jan 2020 at 14:18

Sorry I am afraid I don't. We have a dedicated partner where we host our own kit and do Veeam replication. I am sure a couple of others on here might be able to but if not Veeam themselves on their forums may be able to offer partner lists.

neil_g · 4 Jan 2020 at 15:01

Another vote for veeam.

But on the folder redirection side, I've not seen this cause too much slowness to be fair. Assuming you're not pulling massive cad files across the network. Presumably your network is in good health?

Personally if you let users start saving locally you're in for a world of pain.

Quartz · 4 Jan 2020 at 15:21

lumencreative said:
Needs to be able to backup each windows client in the company.
I did wonder whether I could use Windows Server to backup the client pc's to the main server, then just back that up as part of the 'server' backup but a full & proper backup of each client pc would be better I think as it would make restoring a single client pc much easier.

How many PCs? Because Windows Server Essentials 2016 - not 2019 - might be just the answer if you've got fewer than 25 clients.

lumencreative · 4 Jan 2020 at 16:37

neil_g said:
Another vote for veeam.

But on the folder redirection side, I've not seen this cause too much slowness to be fair. Assuming you're not pulling massive cad files across the network. Presumably your network is in good health?

Personally if you let users start saving locally you're in for a world of pain.

Thanks, appreciate the view on the folder redirection. Our current network is gigabit and we do pull some files that are 900MB+ but not many. We will be installing Cat6A in our new premises and upgrading to a 10Gbe switch in the next 6 months or so, so that may improve the drop in performance we have noticed.

Quartz said:
How many PCs? Because Windows Server Essentials 2016 - not 2019 - might be just the answer if you've got fewer than 25 clients.

About 12-14 PC’s in total.

Can I ask why you say 2016 and not 2019? As I understand it, the licensing for Essentials 2016 allow you to run an instance as hyper-v and one instance of Essentials 2016 on a vm, but then I’d need to have the domain controller and file server all as a single vm.

Quartz · 4 Jan 2020 at 16:48

lumencreative said:
About 12-14 PC’s in total.

Perfect. WSE will backup your PCs and then you can backup the server to another device. This is what I do here (a more modest 2-3 PCs). I have WSE running on a HP Microserver and it backs itself up to a USB drive (I recently installed a new one after the old backup drive stopped working). I don't do it but I believe you can backup to the cloud. You can restore a server directly from a USB drive.

lumencreative said:
Can I ask why you say 2016 and not 2019?

Because AIUI WSE 2019 drops the client backup functionality.

lumencreative · 4 Jan 2020 at 17:08

Quartz said:
Perfect. WSE will backup your PCs and then you can backup the server to another device. This is what I do here (a more modest 2-3 PCs). I have WSE running on a HP Microserver and it backs itself up to a USB drive (I recently installed a new one after the old backup drive stopped working). I don't do it but I believe you can backup to the cloud. You can restore a server directly from a USB drive.

Because AIUI WSE 2019 drops the client backup functionality.

Just been looking at Essentials 2019 and it appears they’ve also removed remote access and the Windows essentials dashboard which really sucks.

I think I might stick with Windows Server standard though and keep all files on the Server, especially if Windows Server Essentials is in the process of being phased out as Microsoft seem to suggest.

Quartz · 4 Jan 2020 at 18:18

lumencreative said:
especially if Windows Server Essentials is in the process of being phased out as Microsoft seem to suggest.

WSE 2016 still works just fine. You don't have to upgrade it to 2019.

lumencreative · 4 Jan 2020 at 18:29

Quartz said:
WSE 2016 still works just fine. You don't have to upgrade it to 2019.

Very true but it depends if I can get an Essentials 2026 license - we already have a license for Server 2016 STD.

ShadowMan said:
Sorry I am afraid I don't. We have a dedicated partner where we host our own kit and do Veeam replication. I am sure a couple of others on here might be able to but if not Veeam themselves on their forums may be able to offer partner lists.

One thing I forgot to ask - if I run Veeam on our Dell T320, do I need to install it on Windows Server or can I get away with running it on Windows 10?

ShadowMan · 5 Jan 2020 at 01:52

I don’t know actually. We have just always run it on Windows Server. It’s actually on a 2012 R2 box due to licensing at the moment. If you haven’t already, get on the Veeam forums. Guys there are very helpful. Also Google for Jorge De La Cruz. He has done a lot of stuff in video and blog. He is/was a Veeam employee and I have met him a couple of times and he knows his stuff and out it out there to share. Not spoke to him for a while but his stuff will still be available.

Also need to say thanks as your posts have prompted me to check a DL380 G8 we have in our outgoing WEEE bin to see if I can salvage/sell some bits. It’s a high spec box so may recoup some stuff for work. Didn’t realise there was a market for older out of warranty kit.

lumencreative · 5 Jan 2020 at 07:26

ShadowMan said:
I don’t know actually. We have just always run it on Windows Server. It’s actually on a 2012 R2 box due to licensing at the moment. If you haven’t already, get on the Veeam forums. Guys there are very helpful. Also Google for Jorge De La Cruz. He has done a lot of stuff in video and blog. He is/was a Veeam employee and I have met him a couple of times and he knows his stuff and out it out there to share. Not spoke to him for a while but his stuff will still be available.

Also need to say thanks as your posts have prompted me to check a DL380 G8 we have in our outgoing WEEE bin to see if I can salvage/sell some bits. It’s a high spec box so may recoup some stuff for work. Didn’t realise there was a market for older out of warranty kit.

Thanks, I’ll get on the Veeam forums

There’s always a market for older enterprise gear (it was actually a tech YouTube channel that got me looking...you’d be surprised at how many youtubers have server setups in their houses to store their video archives).