Off-site Backup Solution for Server 2012 R2 Essentials

Savan_P · 26 Jun 2015 at 09:11

OcUK,

We currently are running Server 2012 R2 Essentials. Nothing too fancy, just a load of shares, network drives and users.

Currently the backup solution for the core 11GB of data is:

Incremental backup to a Google Drive folder. This then updates the files to Google Drive cloud servers. Works pretty well, however the Drive application has a tendancy to collapse and a user has to be logged into the server, so when the server restarts after updates we need to remember to log back in.
Manual backup to external hard drive. All the 11GB data is copied onto a portable hard drive every evening before I leave. I then take the hard drive home with me.
At 10pm each day the server copies all 11GB into a dated folder on another internal hard drive. This means that we can go back to specific days to get files that may be overwritten. Iperius backup carries this out, however again a user needs to be logged into the server.

Anything to make the process above both safer and easier/faster would be appreciated!

Sav

Little_Crow · 26 Jun 2015 at 10:23

Honestly, for 11GB of data I don't think you need to get too fancy and it sounds like you have a good handle on it already.
No reliance on a single backup method, and copies of previous data all sounds good to me.

If you can sort out your cloud backup issues I think you're golden.

Spammeh · 26 Jun 2015 at 10:52

Maybe make use of VSS (Shadow Copies) to give yourself snapshots of your data throughout the day.. other than that, agree with Little Crow

Savan_P · 29 Jun 2015 at 09:29

Right ok. The main issue currently is this off-site backup.

It is quite time-consuming having to copy and paste the data manually. If we could plug the HD into the server at some point in the day, then it did a copy at say 6pm automatically, that would be perfect.

datsunman · 29 Jun 2015 at 09:49

Look at Veeam Endpoint Protection, free and you're able to schedule and backup to USB/RDX etc. Only thing lacking at the moment is email notification but you could set that up with event log notifications if you wanted to.

16-bit · 29 Jun 2015 at 11:03

Couple of questions:
Are you looking to spend money?
Is it just flat files?

Something free you could try is Duplicati, It supports Google drive so you could keep using that.

Gammawolf · 29 Jun 2015 at 12:28

Just throwing it out there (not that I would do it myself), if you want to continue using google drive you can configure it to login as a service so no one needs to login and it comes back automatically after reboots

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/mMM0txUmrOU

dovey · 29 Jun 2015 at 22:32

You could stick the backup in Azure, 11gb wont cost much and should be pretty easy to set up with server 2012.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/backup/

Caged · 29 Jun 2015 at 22:33

dovey said:
You could stick the backup in Azure, 11gb wont cost much and should be pretty easy to set up with server 2012.

http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/services/backup/

swain90 · 30 Jun 2015 at 16:22

If you're wanting a more automated system, why not create your own?

I created a small VB.net app which emails myself and a colleague when one of our cloud servers memory gets low.

Copying files in VB.net is pretty straight forward so wouldn't take too much time to create and it would allow you to add your own specific features.

However this is only useful if you have knowledge of a programming language!

krozor · 1 Jul 2015 at 22:33

Hi, try cloudberry to Amazon s3 crazy cheap and very reliable, let me know if you want to know more? And no I don't work for them :-)