Backup solution

nutcase

nutcase

nutcase

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Afternoon all :)

Looking for feasibility on this one - I don't like the current backup method we use at work and want to improve it. Problem is, I haven't got a clue about these things.

Currently:

2x RDX drives run each night with incremental backups, and a full backup once a week. The "tapes" are rotated.

What happens is people delete stuff and moan when they want it back, and we have to load the right drive and find it.

What I'd like to do is install an offsite NAS that takes a continuous incremental backup (we have a 100mb connection to a remote site). This NAS would then have the RDX drives connected for nightly backups that are taken off site as usual.

Can this be automated? Is it possible for the live backup to include deleted files somehow? In other words incremental backups that don't remove deleted files until they've been deleted for, say, a month?

thanks :)
 
2008R2, multi server, 3x physical, 1x virtual. Just looking for file level at the moment but I do want to eventually get all the servers moved over to virtual and so can use snapshots etc.

Not that I really understand much on that yet. Thanks :)
 
Just for a cheap and cheerful quick solution you could check out Syncback Pro. Used this to back up file shares to a nas at an old workplace. Could go back several weeks/ months and restore single files in seconds (browse to the share they're backed up to and simply copy a file from the date needed).

Far quicker and efficient than any enterprise solution such as Backup Exec.
 
How much data are you backing up? If your going full virtual Veeam is great and with V7 it offers tape drive support. The file level restore does seem to take ages though and in most cases it's probably faster to complete an instant restore and then copy the files off.

We currently backup about 3TB of data every night where half of the backup runs to 3x1.2TB SAS disks in Raid0 this then duplicates to a DAS and to tape. The Veeam backup goes straight to the DAS and then to tape. The backup server is at the other end of the building quite away from the server room and has a 10GB fibre link from our main switch.

We use Symantec Backup Exec 2010R3 to complete the other half of the backup.
 
I've found the file level restore to be extremely quick - certainly compared to full restore (which is faster still than tape, obviously).

Do you index your guest file systems?
 
DRZ said:
I've found the file level restore to be extremely quick - certainly compared to full restore (which is faster still than tape, obviously).

Do you index your guest file systems?
Click to expand...

We do and it has worked fine for us previously. On our cloud platform serving some clients with a 750GB vmdk I gave up and just restored the entire VM to another server to get the files off. This took all of 10 minutes to complete, sounds like something isn't right though so we are investigating.
 
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I can't say I've done a file-level restore from a 750GB VMDK so I might be speaking out of turn, but I would expect it to be faster than a restore. Maybe not though - I'd be interested to know your conclusions!
 
DRZ said:
I can't say I've done a file-level restore from a 750GB VMDK so I might be speaking out of turn, but I would expect it to be faster than a restore. Maybe not though - I'd be interested to know your conclusions!
Click to expand...

My thoughts were the same from my experience with backup exec but it was almost like it was cataloguing for 24 hours (never completed) with the Veeam agent maxed out on CPU. With the instant restore it just mounts the back storage to whichever server you want. Was very surprised on how easy it was actually!
 
nutcase_1uk said:
We've got about 2TB.
Click to expand...

With this amount of data then it would be best to back up to disk then duplicate to tape. Backing up 2TB in a good time frame is a different matter though without spending a decent amount. Our DAS which up until recently had 15 x 2TB SATA 7200 spin disk's in a raid 5 and it just couldn't handle the throughput.

Backing up to disk first has many benefits like faster restore times and it's always good to have multiple backups rather than having to rely on a tape all the time.

We use Backup Exec and although not the cheapest it does the job well although a lot of people aren't fan's of 2012 (me included) so we have stuck with 2010. You can complete incremental backups so this will greatly reduce the time window in which this runs along with de-duplication if your really desperate and money is no issue.

A NAS would work but I have no experience with this amount of data to a NAS. You'd be much better off with a DAS or SAN with some fast disks 10k+ if you are wanting to complete a full backup every night. A NAS would probably work if you complete a full backup say every Friday/Saturday and then incremental for weekdays.
 
Forgot about this thread :)

Just to conclude - we have been running disk to disk to tape (well RDX) for a few months now after purchasing a small NAS. It works quite well with full backups at the weekend and incremental nightly (Backup Exec 2010).

thanks all :)
 
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