Cloud backup

[ohio_grad_06]

Ok had someone asking about offsite backups, whether that's cloud based or whether that means they buy a godaddy server or they host it out of town and connect it to VPN and have things back up that way. I've heard about Crashplan. Is it any good? He mentioned Dropbox but I don't know if that is going to be a solution.

Most things are backed up now on site using Windows NTbackup to external drives. Which works great for in the building but if there were a fire or tornado, you get the idea. What do you all recommend?

 

[Knightsman]

Yes Crashplan is awesome.

 

[YOCS]

I've setup residential customers with Crashplan to have it backup to a friend computer and vise versa and its free. For my business customers I use Dell Appasure Replay which creates a snapshot of the servers and workstations every hour I could create a snap every 15 min if I wanted to. I also have a Replay Server off-site that they replicate to. Others on TN have been saying good things about Datto Alto which might be worth a look also

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Any replies you all have I'm open to. I'm a good tech but this is my first time with backups to this complexity. I've done backups where it's just a few servers, but 40 to the cloud seems overwhelming. I mean sure doing local backups no big deal, just a little overwhelmed with where to start. Going to contact crashplan in a little while to see what they think.

The other idea I had was to attempt to create VM's of each box. Put a server together with like 8-12 core maybe like 32 gb of ram and storage and if one goes down, fire it up virtually until the physical is repaired and do a file backup of each, or even just recreate the VM once a week. Or am I off here?

 

[YOCS]

The other idea I had was to attempt to create VM's of each box. Put a server together with like 8-12 core maybe like 32 gb of ram and storage and if one goes down, fire it up virtually until the physical is repaired and do a file backup of each, or even just recreate the VM once a week. Or am I off here?

That's pretty much what Replay does except it can create a VM snapshot every 15 minutes. Then replicates it off site to another replay server in my office every hour. It deduplicates the data so your not transferring huge files. You can restore to a VM, do a bare metal on dissimilar hardware or just restore one file. They have a bunch of different options. I get daily reports with the status etc. Check out their website http://www.appassure.com or have them demo it for you. In my demo they they hosed an Exchange DB then restored it in a couple of minutes.

 

[bluecoast]

With 40 servers, a budget will REALLY help narrow down the choices.

It might be as simple as storing backups offsite.
If you want full images of 40 servers, expect some shell shock from the quote and possibly an upgrade to their WAN connection.

Anything manual with 40 servers will cost WAY too much, your time is too valuable to P2V 40 servers once a week.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Just mainly getting ideas. The data center in question is probably circa 1999-2000. Things of course have been upgraded here and there. Much of things though reside on Windows 2003 boxes. A few Windows Server 2008 machines(some were upgraded from 2003 to 2008, and a couple of new servers). But I do know that over time more and more things have been slowly migrated, like many of the websites hosted on servers have been moved to servers purchased through godaddy, they migrated from exchange to Office 365. So the intent as far as I know is if there's a failure to be able to get running asap.

I was not really given a budget as of yet, but I know most things are just backed up to externals attached to other machines now using software such as NTBackup. I need to check and see if simply copying those backup files that are currently created is enough or if there is a more complex system desired. But the goal is if there is a fire, weather etc. Next day come in, be able to start pulling files and try to resume working again.

 

[krtechsolutions]

if you going with image based backups storagecraft is the way to go.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What are your needs?
Basic files backed up offsite?

Backup of active directory and databases?

Image based backups?

Do you need business continuity..in that you can "boot up" an image either locally within 15 minutes or offsite within 2 hours to restore services.

Best of the best of the best...Datto Siris.
Next best...Datto Alto

All others under that....but your budget is the real thing that will drive this.