Backup/business continuity

[YeOldeStonecat]

...what's your tolerance for downtime - hours, days, weeks?

Key words right there! I describe how things work. And I'm bluntly realistic. "If your server fails, if XXX happens, how long can you tolerate being down?" And I describe the process in very dumbed down terms...but I'm realistic. And that realism is based on experience.

*What if we need to order a new server? I need to go quote a server...and..oh, by the way, only the basic models are ready to shop today at overnight rates and you don't want one of those under-spec'd turds! The better builds with real server component selected (which is what you really want)..can take a few days to pack/ship. And I need to get the price, invoice you, collect the money, deposit it, order the server, wait for it to arrive, built it, and THEN begin the restore process. And what are you using for backup? It may take a bit to build the host OS, restore, and then start restoring data. Oh yeah..I've been to a few clients with cloud only backup, I've seen the restore process run for SEVERAL DAYS! So yeah...you can realistically be at..over a week!

*What if the server is not under current 4 hour warranty..and it takes a day or three for some part to be found, ordered, delivered, installed? Has your alternative backup been tested lately?

*Even with other "image based backups"...with no virtualization abilities...it can takes a while for new server hardware to arrive.

*I flat out tell them our confidence in Datto, and that we've never had anything near this level of confidence with any other product. And I ask them "Wouldn't you want your IT to be using the product he has faith in? Instead of some product he does not have faith in?"

We used to offer 3x levels of backup. Basic, mid range, and top tier.
We only offer mid range and top tier now. But in that sales pitch, we are CLEAR about expections of "when will I be back up and running". We have sales material clearly stating best "back up and running times"...with a little colorful chart.

 

[seedubya]

IMHO that means you aren't selling it correctly. What is your customer's business worth? How many employees? Even at minimum wage being down for a day while you argue with whatever is going to cost vast piles of more money than the $100 / month for an Alto 3 to keep a single server safe, and if they do a year in advance that Alto 3 itself is FREE.

It's an insurance policy, not a backup solution. I live in Arizona, it's a poor market... I get you... yet I still sell a substantial amount of Datto. I do also have some cheap people out there that use ShadowProtect, to a local NAS. But these sites do not have cloud anything for backup, because as soon as you want a cloud sync... Datto is all I'll support. If they won't pay for Datto, they certainly won't pay for my time to maintain something else when it breaks.

The last time I spoke to them the lowest starting price they had was around €550 per month. I haven't looked in a couple of years.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

The last time I spoke to them the lowest starting price they had was around €550 per month. I haven't looked in a couple of years.

Back in the beginning....their smallest Altos were in the mid to upper 100 range (US dollars) per month. They have since opened up a lot of different capacities and number of agents, smallest now is substantially under 100 dollars (US) per month. And the Alto units are free when you commit to at least a year (which..isn't a problem with most clients that you have for years...decades...)

 

[Sky-Knight]

The last time I spoke to them the lowest starting price they had was around €550 per month. I haven't looked in a couple of years.

Yeah, need to take another peek. I'm an entry level partner with the WORST pricing. The Alto 3 2TB backup appliance is $539, and a single agent of 1 year offsite retention is my cost $79 / month. And, if you do a year term, you get the appliance for FREE.

So a single server's backup costs you $80 / month, I ask for $100 and a 1 year commitment to get a free $600 (to the customer) appliance to do the lifting.

Seriously, if a business cannot or will not spend $100 / month to protect themselves in these ways... we should all seriously be considering firing them because they're going to go out of business sooner or later anyway. Best to not rely on them.

 

[seedubya]

Yeah, need to take another peek. I'm an entry level partner with the WORST pricing. The Alto 3 2TB backup appliance is $539, and a single agent of 1 year offsite retention is my cost $79 / month. And, if you do a year term, you get the appliance for FREE.

So a single server's backup costs you $80 / month, I ask for $100 and a 1 year commitment to get a free $600 (to the customer) appliance to do the lifting.

Seriously, if a business cannot or will not spend $100 / month to protect themselves in these ways... we should all seriously be considering firing them because they're going to go out of business sooner or later anyway. Best to not rely on them.

So I've just gone looking and they seem to have a sales team over here now. I've reached out to them to see what's what.

 

[SlickMinnow]

Interesting thread. Thanks for all who are sharing. I, too, am looking for a backup/DR solution for a couple small biz clients. Am I right to believe that the Datto Alto solution would be appropriate for a roughly $800k gross plumbing company. Need to to ensure the Win8.1 QB 'server' is quickly recoverable and maybe some files from the front office machine are backed up. And this is doable for $100/mo to client (about $80 to me)?
Minimal muss and fuss for me and solid protection for client?

 

[Sky-Knight]

Assuming that workstation has 1 tb of data or less on it, yes.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

For sizing Biz Continuity solutions...you generally want at a minimum...storage capable of >2.5x the sum of the volumes. You need to have backups not consume more than 50% of the storage...because when you "mount" a restore point, you need space to mount it. And you want more space for more retentions. So..for example, you don't want a 1TB appliance if you have a server with 800 gigs. For Altos...you can squeeze by with 2x, for Siris, you want at least 2.5x

Now..a limitation regardless of what brand D/R - Biz Continuity service you use...is OEM licensing.
OEM license live and die with the hardware they were purchased with. They're non-transferrable.
So you're not supposed to take an OEM server (or Windows desktop OS) backup and restore it on a different computer/different hardware. Doesn't matter if you're using Datto, or Veeam, or Acronis, or Paragon, or Macrium, or <etc etc etc>.

This is one of the quite a few reasons to use Volume Licensing for your servers!

 

[fencepost]

OEM licensing in a DR scenario is somewhere at the very bottom of my priority list, somewhere below making sure someone bought pens. I just can't see it as a major blocking factor unless there are actually features disabled. If I'm in a DR scenario with a Datto (or any other image backup) it's going to be one of

• Spun up on a VM as a temporary measure, will be back on original hardware soon (awaiting parts or sterilization of the network)
  
• Spun up on a VM as a temporary measure because the original hardware is no more (fire, flood, earthquake, locusts, whatever) and it'll then be restored onto a new physical box once that's received.
• Spun up on new temporary hardware waiting on new permanent
• Spun up directly onto new permanent hardware

Licensing can be addressed after the client's back up and running on permanent hardware, assuming that the original wasn't repaired.

The possibility of enforcement in these scenarios doesn't really scare me, in large part because my impression is that it doesn't move that fast and is largely focused on remediation. If someone at MS was silly enough to try to assess penalties in a situation like that, I'd happily spend time trumpeting "Here's why to move off of MS products: My client's HD failed, then MS tried to screw them for an extra $2000 of licensing for the 3 days we were on alternate hardware waiting on backordered drives." I would happily name names as well, "Person X and their boss Person Y signed off on this."

I'd also kick and scream all the way to the top of the ladder - "We're one of the companies that runs legit and this is how your people treat us when we have a disaster recovery scenario?" straight to the CEO's office.

 

[Sky-Knight]

OEM licensing just means you have to buy the OS again on the new platform, and the price is the same as volume so honestly... it's not really worth using on servers.

 

[fencepost]

I think the only OEM license we've had on a server since 2008R2 came out is on an older-generation HP that originally shipped with SBS2011 and that we ended up with when the practice that had it closed. Even then, the server was securely wiped (medical) and I'm not sure we ever installed anything on it - certainly not SBS - so the license was "on" the server only in that there was a sticker on there.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

OEM licensing in a DR scenario is somewhere at the very bottom of my priority list, somewhere below making sure someone bought pens. I just can't see it as a major blocking factor unless there are actually features disabled.

When it 100% flat out stops you from logging into the server to adjust things and gain functionality on the newly spun up instance (like the new virtual NIC on the new virtual guest instance of the newly spun up instance)...oh it should be somewhere on the importance level above "pens". Unless you don't mind walking away from the client quitting the job with your tail between your legs because you're stuck and helpless in bringing back their server.

Something like a domain controller may need that virtual NIC manually set for IPs and things resorted....they're not always ready on that first bootup on new hardware...esp with a new NIC installed.

I've spun up an instance or dozens that were OEM....on clients we took over that we didn't do their servers yet (had to take on existing servers with migration plans to new servers). Seen some do nothing but put up the activation screen and they would flat out not proceed beyond that until satisfied with a new legit key. And during a D/R scenario, with a client hovering over your shoulder constantly asking "How's things going, when is it going to be back up? I thought this Datto thing got us up real fast?! When can staff get back to work?"...you don't want to add a few hours calling Microsoft support to talk to Haboo and purchase a new license and running the license reset steps. Been there, done that, seen the show, brought home the tee shirts, wrote the book, still have the shovel!

Now, granted...with newer versions of OEM servers activation has become much easier...and I have not seen modern OS's 100% completely halt you from getting to ctrl+at+del...I HAVE seen that in prior OS versions (like back in the 2003 days...quite a few times). But having been through training at Datto, and read the manuals, and read other manuals and FAQs from other backups software vendors, and comprehended Microsofts TOS as a Microsoft partner...yeah I like to do things properly and not roll the dice risking something getting in the way of my D/R steps. This is an area I want to shine, not fall on my face and falsely redirect blame at a product...when my education and use of the product should have avoided this.

There are a few reasons OEM licensing is much cheaper that retail/vol...but during D/R scenarios it can be a costly savings.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Server 2016 and Server 2019 aren't cheaper on the OEM side though, the prices are the same. It's $900 for standard, plus CALs. The only cost difference is upgrade assurance.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Server 2016 and Server 2019 aren't cheaper on the OEM side though, the prices are the same. It's $900 for standard, plus CALs. The only cost difference is upgrade assurance.

Server 16 surely is...get a Dell Smell or HP server with OEM Server 2016 Essentials and it's like 360 bucks for the server license...versus MSRP of Retail/Vol of 501 bucks.

I just installed a new Dell 340 early this morning at a client, doing Vol license of Essentials at MSRP of 501, did not do the optional OEM server license that would bundle with it from Dell. Cuz the client uses Datto!

Speaking of this Client, Datto saved the day for them when their older Dell server went tango uniform...2 out of 3 drives went orange..LOL. Server would sometimes boot up. heh.

Love the new server with RAID 10 SSDs...I installed Server 19 Essen Hyper-V in 7 minutes! And..when she boots up, once it gets past the Dell hardware bootup and hits the HDDs...Windows is up at login in 7 seconds..and the login snap right to desktop within another 2 seconds. To desktop in under 10 seconds!

 

[Yosebas84]

Veeam all the way, local Synology with sync to an offsite Synology (your shop maybe?) And Sync to OneDrive through veeam or Synology Cloud Backup.

Cheap, fast, and works like a charm!

 

[Sky-Knight]

@YeOldeStonecat Oh yeah, SSD RAID 10 is wonderful, it takes longer to get through the POST process than it does to install windows in many cases.

 

[fencepost]

When it 100% flat out stops you from logging into the server to adjust things and gain functionality on the newly spun up instance (like the new virtual NIC on the new virtual guest instance of the newly spun up instance).

As I noted, I haven't needed to deal with OEM Server in quite some time, I didn't realize that newer versions locked down like that, at least not that it did so immediately. I could see it doing so if it was unactivated after 30-90 days, but my focus was on "temporary" and it'd better be possible to get onto new hardware within a month.

 

[Sky-Knight]

@fencepost, they don't... it was server 2003 that did that. 2008 onward as far as I'm aware have at least a 14 day grace period. And we're talking about the host OS anyway, because the guest OSs have no idea where they're running so if you've virtualized stuff like you're supposed to, you're less likely to have a problem. But it is a licensing issue, one easily solved by simply using volume for servers.