Recommend a back up solution for a small company

leigh_boy · 26 Aug 2014 at 08:31

Hi guys i need help with a client i have, i recently done a new server and 6 pc install server 2012 and windows 7 pro. I was initially asked to re use the old backup drive 80gb usb drive caddying system, but the drive keeps getting stuck and will not eject also causing the system to blue screen.

My client wants a solution that is not over kill to backup 200 gb this includes the OS actual data is something like 100GB and has takes 20 years to get this far.

the office is part of the house 4 floors, server in basement and they don't want to change drives because they forget ( kind of people you cant change there minds) so i was just thinking NAS and Acronis backup?

options please

edscdk · 26 Aug 2014 at 09:05

acronis to a NAS sounds good, however it will stop working and they will not notice... make sure you make it clear to them THEY must check the backups.... the 2012 internal backup also works well...

#Chri5# · 26 Aug 2014 at 09:16

Or BackupAssist. Setup e-mail reports / notifications to both you and a member of staff.

Downside of only going to a NAS in the same building is very limited DR

leigh_boy · 26 Aug 2014 at 09:18

#Chri5# said:
Or BackupAssist. Setup e-mail reports / notifications to both you and a member of staff.

Downside of only going to a NAS in the same building is very limited DR

il take a look at backup assist, ye i have said to them that should the building catch fire the NAS will go with it. they basically dont care ( thats the kind of people they are) i ts a bit like throwing money away, but hey ho

boxman2000 · 26 Aug 2014 at 14:37

What about something like Backblaze?

leigh_boy · 26 Aug 2014 at 16:07

boxman2000 said:
What about something like Backblaze?

that looks ok for $50 a year. have you used them? what the support like?

RichIbizaSport · 11 Sep 2014 at 16:44

*edit* oops, slight necro there! Quiet period at work

See if you can convince them of something like jungle disk server edition to copy the data offsite if they forget to change tapes. $5 monthly for a license, then a couple of dollars for data transfer/storage charges. Once the initial upload is done, depending on how much the data changes it'll be very quick. Just set it up and it'll run forever, daily email alerts of backups or failures.

nutcase · 11 Sep 2014 at 20:39

Windows server backup to RDX drive? With a swapping routine for keeping the cartridges offsite?

Rroff · 11 Sep 2014 at 20:45

#Chri5# said:
Or BackupAssist. Setup e-mail reports / notifications to both you and a member of staff.

Downside of only going to a NAS in the same building is very limited DR

Only if you don't take full advantage of some/all the features provided by a modern NAS.

-Real time data replication to a rear connected USB drive (primarily use RAID for uptime convenience in the event of a member disc failure rather than redundancy)

-Configure USB Copy port to take a snapshot of the internal RAID to rotated external USB drives at regular increments and store them off site.

-Make use of built in cloud or rsync, etc. functionality to automate off site mirroring of the data to another server or remote storage.

#Chri5# · 12 Sep 2014 at 11:12

Do you know which makes/model of NAS do the real time write through to a USB HD? I've setup a couple of Synologys and QNAPs of late but not had time to dig into the feature set properly.

We do have customers who backup to NAS (great as it means no human intervention to swap media) but the NAS unit is located a good distance from the server(s) (natural fire break).

jameshurrell · 12 Sep 2014 at 13:03

QNAP does realtime after an initial sync to external USB.

http://docs.qnap.com/nas/4.1/Home/en/index.html?external_backup.htm

I have a QNAP myself and in clients, but have not used realtime - I just do a nightly to an external USB and then also send the lot over to Amazon S3 on a nightly basis.

Rroff · 12 Sep 2014 at 14:30

Both QNAP and Synology have the functionality (AFAIK pretty much anything other than their cheapest models support it) setting it up can be a little more complicated as usually you have to create a custom job in the backup station/external drive section. (There is a very minor impact on the NAS write speeds on my setup using it but I'd rather have the extra redundancy).

I use it for my personal NAS but a couple of smaller businesses I've setup a NAS for have just wanted me to setup the front USB Copy port behaviour so they can 1 button dump a snapshot of the share with their most critical information on to store off site.

I ended up using both methods personally so that I have an offline copy that can't be infected by for instance by cryptolocker style ransomware - more recent variants have become increasingly more sophisticated at attacking network shares and even infecting some *nix based network hardware.

anything I don't mind · 12 Sep 2014 at 15:40

We use mozy back up at one small site to back up about 200gb of data including sql and exchange and a document and file stores. Works ok, it does an initial full backup then just uploads changes.