What do you use for backups? Soft/Hardware

Tomcat825

Tomcat825

Tomcat825

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Hiya,

Just curious as to what people use for back ups in the work environment software and hardware wise?

I currently use Backup Platinum (5.0) off our DC backing up to 2 storage servers but are constantly running into problems that are are nigh on impossible to solve because the logs are terrible and the error messages are worse. It seems to be completely random at the moment as to whether we're going to get a complete back up out of it.
We have quite a few backups set up on it so the next thing is to run a fine comb through it and cut down on how many we have, but after 6 months of trying to get it to work without too much human intervention we've decided to start looking around for a different system to do backups.

Any suggestions would also be useful, realistically we'd only want to change software, not hardware.
 
Is this block or file level based?

We currently run Networker, which seems to do the job for the best part.
 
Backup exec running to tape and HD.

Works perfectly 98% of the time, but then the 2% when its not its #$£%4^!!!!

For the most part it is really good and just works but the most random of things can really throw a spanner in the works!

They do a 30day demo that is well worth testing :)
 
We use commvault to backup 100+ servers.
They're a mix of VM Image backups via vRanger, file backups and SQL backups.
Everything is backed up to 2 LTO4 drives in an HP MSL8096 Tape Library.

I don't think Commvault is particularly cheap, but I have yet to get any problems with it - which makes it worth it in my mind.
 
Little_Crow said:
I have yet to get any problems with it - which makes it worth it in my mind.
Click to expand...

I agree! Looking through these now. Also forgot to ask what the customer service is like from aforementioned products? (If you've ever needed help that is)
Our current one has next to no customer service and if you do get it, it's terrible.
 
250+ servers. NetApp Snapshot, Commvault capacity agreement, Disk to Disk to Tape. All running over a new Cisco 6509/Nexus Core with multi 10Gb connections.
 
Microsoft DPM, and we cycle through 6 different 3TB ESATA Drives (one a week) using Firestreamer to emulate tapes.

Works well enough.
 
Hardware covers anything from DAT (urgh) to LTO-5 and single USB HDs to NASes with RAID on the end of private fibre backbones.

Software could be good old NTBackup, Backup Exec, BESR, Backup Assist, Windows Backup, CrashPlan and StoreGrid - there's probably more I can't remember right now!
 
DR :
i365 Evault, two Vaults in Active/Passive replication + two 8TB nexsan SATABOYs for extra storage (one for each vault).

Backup:
Windows VSS for quick online file restores.
Other stuff uses VMware/Equallogic snapshots. (ESXi hosts themselves are backed up by i365 too)

Some systems also have SQL Maintenance backups running, though those are mostly to keep commiting the xlogs rather than backing up the data.
 
Using Microsoft DPM 2010 and very happy with it. Integrates well with Microsoft's server products such as SQL, Exchange and Hyper-V. Recovery is quick and easy. Also provides full bare metal backup of 2008R2 servers and W7 clients.

For off-site backup, we looked at using something like Firestreamer to emulate tape drives but instead opted to use external drives directly. We have a batch file which mounts the latest replicas for all protected data and then bulk copies it all to the external drive. We have a number of these which are rotated on a weekly basis.
 
NBU 7.1 soon to be 7.5, 2 masters, 2 sites, 2xLTO2 libraries, 2xLTO3 libraries, 1xLTO4 and 1xLTO5. For regional sites we use SureSync to bring stuff down to a primary location, which it gets backed up on there.

Although I really want to do some dedupe\disk based backups, but I have no storage, and all my budget has been allocated this year, fun!
 
Backup/file recovery from least relied upon to most relied upon (in disaster recovery terms):
VSS for instant deleted file restore
DFSR live replication to another storage device in another building (This is also setup identical to the other building in case one storage device fails)
Backup Exec 2010 R3 to LTO4 tapes on an Ultrium tape drive (VMs backed up once a week mainly, one or two backed up daily if they're critical and always changing)
Tapes stored in a fire proof safe and changed daily
 
Backup Exec 2010 R3 software wise and SQLBackupAndFTP for database flat file management.

Hardware is a 8TB server and a Quantum Superloader 16 slot and using LT04 tapes. Setup is a D2D2T.

Also VSS in place.
 
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