WHS 2011 backup solution question

Uhtred

Uhtred

Uhtred

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Hi there, I'm considering moving to this platform over the next few months but i have a question about backups.

I understand drive extender is no longer a feature. I would have 3x1tb drives and 1x500gb.

1x 500 gb - os and misc
1x1tb - photo\media share
2x1tb - backup

In the network i have two laptops and three PCs which comes to about 700gb but could well grow over 1tb in a year or so.

My question is about the backups. How will WHS manage the space on the two 1tb drives if the backup size goes over 1tb? Will it split the backups over the two drives?

I also hear there is a thing called 'server backup' which i have played about with in 2008, would i only use this if i wanted to backup the server itself? (which i probably won't bother doing)
 
Having just switched to WHS2011 from WHSv1 I can say...

1. If your Client Backups exceed the size of the 1TB drive they will get stuck or at best fight to keep space free by deleting older backups. You can install a larger drive and with the Client Backups appearing as a folder in the WHS Dashboard so you can run the "move folder wizard" to put it on a larger drive. Keep in mind WHS client backup has de-duplication so if every computer backed up is running Win7 then only one set of Win7 files will be stored on the server. Of my 5 computers I had in WHSv1 I never exceeded 550GB

2. The Server backup function should be reliable enough, simply right click the WHS listed in the WHS Dashboard and setup the backup (with an attached USB HDD) it can backup everything unlike WHSv1 including the server OS, the Client Backups, and Data. There is just two problems, it cannot backup disks over 2TB in size (you cannot select them even to backup just one file), and the automated backup has the restriction that it must run every day (or as it recommends twice a day!) otherwise it keeps flashing up dashboard alerts. Also keep in mind the 2TB limit extends to clients so if you have any client computers with a >2TB disk it will refuse to back it up


The setup I've just done is using a standalone 2TB disk for OS and Client Backups and a RAID5 array of 3.7TB for everything else. The server backup won't touch the 3.7TB as it's too big. So I'm using the WHS backup to protect the OS and Client Backups, then using SyncToy to keep the RAID5 duplicated to a removable disk.

Hopefully that makes at least some sense!
 
Thank you for the reply, PR.

1 - yes the 'de-duplication' is one of the killer features I want to use with WHS, as a lot our HD home videos are on more than one machine for editing so perhaps 1tb will be enough for quite some time, and in the future I can upgrade the disk as you say or if i'm skint use RAID 1 on the motherboard!

2 - Larger than 2tb shouldn't be a problem. Can I just confirm, are client backups the same as server backups? I'm guessing they are separate functions?

I've not used WHS before so I'm a little unsure what else it can do...you mention synctoy, i didn't realise you could run applications in the traditional sense? ie could I set up a bit torrent client or a VPN?
 
It's basically Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with a few features locked out and a few new ones bolted on top. If you install it on a PC you will get the traditional desktop/start menu, you can install applications from there, in WHSv1 you had to be careful not to tamper with the drivepool but WHS2011 seems much more standard so as long as you install apps to the C:\ drive it shouldn't cause any issues.

Once you've installed the client software on a PC install an addin to WHS called Advanced Admin Console open the Dashboard then you can then link installed applications like uTorrent to the dashboard for easy access. VPN not too sure, I believe it's possible but you'd need to read in to it more. http://forum.wegotserved.com/ is pretty good.

Yes client and server backups are separate but they rely on the same technology. Once the client connector is installed on a PC, you configure a time window for backups to be done, then at a random point in that window client PCs will be backed up. Depending on what you've set computers will be woken out of sleep to do it. You can also run it manually from the dashboard or launcher. The server backup is configured separately but as you' want to backup to an external disk you need to make sure the disk is connected when the backup is run or you start getting told off my network alerts!
 
PR. said:
It's basically Windows 2008 R2 SP1 with a few features locked out and a few new ones bolted on top. If you install it on a PC you will get the traditional desktop/start menu, you can install applications from there, in WHSv1 you had to be careful not to tamper with the drivepool but WHS2011 seems much more standard so as long as you install apps to the C:\ drive it shouldn't cause any issues.

Once you've installed the client software on a PC install an addin to WHS called Advanced Admin Console open the Dashboard then you can then link installed applications like uTorrent to the dashboard for easy access. VPN not too sure, I believe it's possible but you'd need to read in to it more. http://forum.wegotserved.com/ is pretty good.

Yes client and server backups are separate but they rely on the same technology. Once the client connector is installed on a PC, you configure a time window for backups to be done, then at a random point in that window client PCs will be backed up. Depending on what you've set computers will be woken out of sleep to do it. You can also run it manually from the dashboard or launcher. The server backup is configured separately but as you' want to backup to an external disk you need to make sure the disk is connected when the backup is run or you start getting told off my network alerts!
Click to expand...

Brilliant - i'm going to get some hardware together and give it a bash.

Thanks again!
 
It's on Technet but it's not out to buy yet and no price has been announced, supposed to be this month though...
 
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