Backup system for multiple server locations

Pho

Pho

Pho

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
9,336
Location
Derbyshire
Hi all,

Hopefully someone with more knowledge on this than me can suggest the best way to get this working. First of all I'll point out that I'm a programmer but thanks to working for a small company an accidental system/database/IT support/everything administrator too - I'm sure a few of you can relate :p!

My company is moving offices to two more locations and I'm wondering how we go about setting up a decent backup system to cope with all of this. The server at the current office will stay as it is.

Here's a crude diagram of the current set-up (blue) and new locations (yellow):



Currently there's no active directory system being used and all files are stored on users' local machines (there are user share folders on the server however which are auto-backed to the NAS) and synced to the external drive and taken offsite whenever I get around to it, I did set-up active directory a while ago but never got the chance/go-ahead to actually move everyone over to it :/.

I really want to avoid having a bad backup scheme with the new locations and was wondering how others would do it? I can see that having separate servers at each new location with some sort of AD or simple rcopy of users' documents from their own machines which can sync over to the original office server every night etc would be a simple solution?

Am I missing anything?

Cheers :).
 
Speaking with cokecan72 we wondered whether a simple solution for now would be to get a couple of new NAS boxes for the new locations and automatically sync up users' machines to it with NTBackup / the one built into Windows Vista/Windows 7 - from here an external drive could be plugged into it on Friday say, be backed up to automatically, and taken off-site until the following Friday.

Does that sound feasible?
 
My main concern with the backups here that I see is that they are currently all generally kept onsite.
OK if one machine fails. Problem if the building burns down.
 
I might not have made it clear in my diagram but the external drive at the current office is taken off-site, and the server/NAS box are in separate buildings (albeit about 15 metres away).
 
I'm guessing the fire could still effect the buildings 15m away, but the external drive goes offsite. Simplest is the new NAS idea....probably quickest to implement as well
 
Heh that's true, hopefully I'll never have to test that theory. NAS sounds like the way forward then, thanks for all your help everyone :).
 
i365 is probably worth looking at. They offer both software on a box (called plug and protect) or a fully Hosted solution.

Got two of those backing up 35 servers distributed across 6 sites, and replicating the backup sets between the two. Dedupe and compression is impressive with 10:1 ratio on some of the SQL DBs.

Hosting the units yourself isn't cheap, but I've not really looked at the hosted option before. These do also allow the exporting of safesets to removable media if you wanted to stick with your External HDD for offsite too.

As for being accidental support, I work for a pretty big company and it's much the same :P just the job titles are different. I made the mistake of specialising in networks, this then somehow makes you also responsible for stuff that connects to a network too. Which is pretty much everything from Fax machines, PBXs, SANs, even just had a maintenance guy ask me where a lighting dis board was. Except coding, I'll script but that's it, I draw the line at that :P
 
I'm semi reluctant to recommend for business as I haven't been using it for ages yet but you could look at Crashplan, it's remarkably powerful for free stuff (they'd like you to buy online backup to use with it but there's no requirement to).

I have a server lurking in a datacenter with a few 2TB drives and a gigabit connection which I don't get billed for, combined with that I'm tossing all the files from my workstations to it and it's working nicely. The really critical stuff (a few hundred MB of work docs) I'm also chucking to their online storage separately so I have three copies in different locations. If your sites have decent connections it might work for you. Versions for Windows, Unix and OSX...
 
What about housing all your docs on Amazon EC2 etc? you could have archived copies there and copies locally on your PC, this way they are available at any location and its a very simple solution.

Not saying it could ever replace a decent back up strategy, but just an idea!
 
I'd take a look at something like dropbox, sugar sync or mozy. The first two will allow you to sync the files on the server for backup etc.
 
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