Automated Backups, NAS's, etc.

MS tool called robocopy is a small executable able to run from command line and mirror one location to another. It can do full or incremental backups nightly and can be set to exclude certain directories or even certain types of files. Very flexible and lightweight. I used to use it for nightly backups of my server to a secondary PC and it worked well.

Now I have two 1.5 TB readynas units with one backing up to the other each night. They are kind of expensive for a unix box but work well.

There are hundreds of ways to backup files automatically. It's important to monitor the backups so you truly can set it and forget it.
 
As a more general question about back-up.....

How long do you let the incremental back-up stack up untill you do another full and then start incrementals based on that?

I do some of the back-up for my office (very low tech office) and we run Genie Back-Up Mananager every night to do incremental and once every 2 weeks for full.

I just have a hard time getting convinved of the concept of incremental back-up into eternity.

In this case the incrementals are usually 200mb or so each day and a full is around 20GB. This is an engineering/cadd type operation so we do daily back-ups in case people screw up something and we need to revert back to an older version.
 
Well, I have two minds about this...

For something so SMALL (i.e. 20 GB), I would just get a good tape backup system and then backup a FULL backup every night.

Then every night take the tape(s) home with you. So, you would need 5 tapes. Then, the Friday Tape should take in incremental backsup for the weekend warriors.

Come Monday, you will have everything from Friday to Sun.

I used to do that in the A&E firm I was the Sys. Admin. for. I was doing 75Gig+, so I'm SURE you will be AOK with the 20Gb.

I had 4 servers. One was a print server, so I didn't bother backing that one up. Made an IMAGE of the hard drive sent that to offsite storage. The mail server was remotely backed up to the larger file server. This was the production drawings and what-not. The smaller file server had it's OWN tape drive (more admin. marketing stuff). The main file server was the monster. 8 Ultra 160 SCSI drives, dual Xenon processors with hotswap everything (including processors!), triple redundant power supplies, single Gigabit or 3x100base-t (bound or redundant).

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The other mind is more towards when you get too large. When I got to this point on the file server, it was more that I was running out of time for backups. SO, Starting on Sunday, I would setup a FULL backup to run on TWO tape drives in parallel. See, it was the verification that took the longest. This guarenteed that I was able to get a FULL backup before start on Monday. Then, from there I only needed to do incrementals over the week. However, in this case I changed from taking 1 tape / system home, then bringing them back each day, I would stockpile throughout the week. I had 2 sets for the weekend run (due to wear) and I rotated them each week. So, in this case to rebuild, I only needed the Sunday set, and as many tapes as was necessary to rebuild up to the last day.

I wanted to just take the older files and set them up as "archived" files...so I wouldn't have to back them up, but the principals decided it was better to pay extra to have the data there and available at all times...so...yeah...

ALSO, ONCE a month do a FULL backup and send that tape OFFSITE!!
 
I gave up on doing complete backups all the time. I copied the files I want over once, quite some time ago, and then just sync from then on. copying everything over is just a waste of time as well as all the HD thrashing, This is just in my humble opinion of course.

I have been using a program called DSynchronize for quite some time. It is a very simple, no frills sync tool. It has a lot of power under the hood though.

You can run it as a service, and have it sync your files on a schedule, you can do it manually, bi-directional, set multiple source and destination folders ect ect.

It can copy to local drives, USB drives, Network drives ect.

It also have a command line option, so you can run it as part of your Home Automation system to have it make sure that it has been sync
d ect.

(When HomeSeer triggers it, I have it first create a .txt file with the date as the file name in source folder, then when completed , I have HS check to see if that file exists in the backup folder, a way to indicate that the backup was successful)

Did I mention that DSynchronize is ABSOLUTELY FREE :D

The way I run my backups here is pretty simple. I make an image every couple of months or so of my Main Boot drive. This is with HomeSeer, the OS and all programs installed ect ect. Then, daily, I sync's the files using DSynchronize to an external HD. If my boot drive were then to get corrupted, I restore the image, and sync the files in the opposite direction, and then am back in business. This usually takes only around 10 minutes to restore the image to the drive, and then run the sync to fill in the gaps.

I had a Hard Drive completely die on me a few months ago (Grinding noises and all). I popped in a new HD, partitioned it, restored the image to it, sync'd and was completely where I was before the crash in around 15 minutes of turning the machine on with the new HD connected.

I cant beleive I ever used to manually reinstall XP, all the programs, and then all the settings, configs and such every time hahah! Just installing the OS takes took almost an hour!
 
just another option to throw out there... Symantec BackupExec is moderately cheap for an office, and has a feature included that does real-time file protection - and you can set up snapshot windows. For instance, you can have it grab a snapshot every 2 hours so that even if someone really screws up during the day, they're not all that lost... and you can have it back up to a local disk, then offload to tape later. Or if your backups are small enugh, I think you can even go to USB keys (16GB drive with compressed files) - or something like that...

If you want to be even fancier, they even have fire-proof hard drives now - 160GB for about $250. Back up to that every day, then do a full backup to take off-site on the weekends.

Then of course - for only 20GB of data that doesn't change much, there's some pretty inexpensive on-line backup solutions so you never really have to think about anything. They basically do continual incremental backups and do the work on their end to keep track of the current state at any given time. Then you're safe against burglary, fire, theft, and forgetfulness.
 
Upstatemike, I use a program called R-Drive. It's like $40, but well worth it. One nice feature is the ability to mount any back up'd image as a logical disk. You can set the backups in size and location, meaning it can be split to multiple DVD's ect. It also creates a bootable CD that you boot from, select the image, and where you want it restored to. I have found that before I format ANYTHING these days, I make an image of the drive first, just in case I need to mount it to get a program setting, or script that I may have changed since the last auto-backup.
 
I have an rsync server running on my 'slug' based NSLU2 and run the backups from my Windows and Linux PCs using an rsync client for each OS. I know that OSX Leapard also has a native rsync client. Actually, rsync is so popular that you will always find a client for any OS.
 
Did i mention my company is pathetic and cheap?

Our main office has about 35 people....we essentially don't have a file server....a desktop has a shared drive which is used to handover files from one machine to another...

When i asked about a central fire server they response was that they preferred to have copies of the data everywhere in case somebody screwed up the file...sort of a unorganized distributed storage architecture...ofcourse the fact that some versions get worked on some more...it becomes completely unclear who has 'the lastets' files...etc..was beyound the owners grasp...when he asks for a drawing it gets to him within an hour or so so he thinks it's all good...what he doesnt know if that 10 people are runnign around the office asking eveyrbody for the same file..comparing...and if totally lost it just get's redone...

So frustrating......

Since i became a PM and complained about it they bought a NAS which only I and the people on my team use...the rest of the company is so brainwashed they actually don't believe central file storage is the way to go because they don't trust that backup's will be made....maybe someting to do with the 'file server' being a PII 600mhz Gateway machine ...and when we lost a file and asked for the tape we guy responsible told us the tape drive broke 6 months ago so there was no back-up....my jaw nearly dropped to the ground...it's 2008 and this is a multimillion dollar a year A&E firm...

Anyway..so i now have a RAID5 array on the NAS and i do daily incremental backups and bi-weekly fulls...the incrementals are there in case we need to rollback to an older file if we changed something and want to change it back..

The full back-up takes so long because our network runs in 10mbit half duplex mode...the admin degraded the full ^(*&^*%% network because the 600mhz PII machine only had a 10mbit card and was getting pummeled....obviously buying a $20 network card was out of the question...IDIOTS...

As far as synchronization goes...does anybody use Microsoft Offline Files function? I've been using it for a year now and it work OK, but not exactly great....
 
I use norton ghost. It does a nice job of drive imaging. I ghost to a local network share.

For extra safety I have it do the backup and then FTP a copy of the backup to my brother PC in another state. This way in the event a virus comes that wacks all my PCs or if I had a fire I can get my data back.

I really like it. I used it twice recently, I have it back up a few times a week but before installing new software I normally run an extra backup. then when I dont like the sofware a few mouse clicks and the pc is rolling back..
 
I have been using Retrospect for a many years in a mixed Mac/PC environment and I have been very happy with it. I have stuck with it till now because it allows me to easily keep my VMware Fusion virtual machines backed up as well as my Macs.
I plan on using TimeMachine once I upgrade my home server and get Leopard. This assumes that it will also be able to handle the virtual machines somehow...
 
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