Help with backing up A LOT of data offsite (2TB)

[thecomputerguy]

I have a client who recently moved all of their data off a windows server and onto a NAS mounted on a MAC mini for backup to CrashPlan (They love this backup program and are reluctant to change, its saved their asses many a time).

Crashplan gave us a procedure to adopt the previous backup so we didn't have to re-upload all the data again. This process did not work, probably because its cross plat-form and our Mac mini is re-uploading everything.

The Problem:

Uploading 2 TB of data on a 10down/1up connection. Crashplan estimates a full backup to take about 6 months.

Solutions I offered:/B]

Their office is next door to mine so I offered to backup their data to an external and store it at my office daily or weekly. They said, "What if the building burns down?

I said I could take a copy of the data upload it on my internet at home (mush faster), and send it to Google drive then install the google drive app on the synology and sync it that way. They said, "What if we lost our NAS and backup and we needed the data promptly? Crashplan will send us a drive with our data on it.

I said, "Well you can install google drive on a computer with 2TB available link the account and re-download everything. Or buy an external and constantly sync it to the external at your house. They said, "What if there is a massive earthquake and everything is a total loss, we don't want our data in the same state as us."

Im not really sure what else I can offer, Crashplan has refused to let us send a drive with our data on it so we don't have to re-upload everything.

Where can I go with this, are their other backup services you guys know of that allow seeding?

 

[mraikes]

That's odd. Crashplan does offer seeding:

http://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/Latest/Backup/Seeded_Backup


EDIT: But I see now that only 1tb at a time can be seeded, so you'd have to send data twice for 2tb. Not very convenient.

 

[Markverhyden]

Well they are not very clear about things. I was looking around and they advertise restore-to-door, shipping a drive with the full backup, for the US (3.5TB Max), but other places they say it is not available. If you get Crashplan PROe you can do the seeding yourself. But that is a self hosting option.

I'm dealing with a graphic arts customer that has close to 3TB. Right now we have it running via TM to a USB 4TB drive. But I'm working on getting him to work smarter by having a offsite as well. Doubt it will be one of the web based services.

 

[brandonkick]

They are at least smart enough to know that a good backup has to be offsite and should include an offline copy.


I don't know if you can upload their data for them to crashplan through your connection (if it's even any faster). But the way I look at it is you have two options:


Seed the data through crashplan, 1 TB at a time. It may be inconvenient, but will be WAY faster then doing it online.


The other option would be to go back to a formal server environment, with redundancy. That's one of the big selling points to running a server... why did they move away from it?

 

[thecomputerguy]

They are at least smart enough to know that a good backup has to be offsite and should include an offline copy.


I don't know if you can upload their data for them to crashplan through your connection (if it's even any faster). But the way I look at it is you have two options:


Seed the data through crashplan, 1 TB at a time. It may be inconvenient, but will be WAY faster then doing it online.


The other option would be to go back to a formal server environment, with redundancy. That's one of the big selling points to running a server... why did they move away from it?

Server was out of space so they got a 4 drive NAS with 8TB of space for growth ... server only had like 1.5TB available. The cost to upgrade the server was a ton more than the NAS and all they use for data is Word, Excel, PDF's and Pictures

 

[cyabro]

You can seed a CrashplanPro backup from a location with a faster internet connection, we do it all the time with our fibre connection for customers.
HOWEVER the data you are wanting to backup has to be in exactly the same location, and folder structure, on both the customers machine and your machine that you are using for the initial seed backup.

This is because, once you've done the initial backup from your machine, and you adopt the backup on the customers machine it will automatically select the files/folders from the backup.
If those files/folders aren't in the same location on the customers machine then it won't work.

 

[thecomputerguy]

You can seed a CrashplanPro backup from a location with a faster internet connection, we do it all the time with our fibre connection for customers.
HOWEVER the data you are wanting to backup has to be in exactly the same location, and folder structure, on both the customers machine and your machine that you are using for the initial seed backup.

This is because, once you've done the initial backup from your machine, and you adopt the backup on the customers machine it will automatically select the files/folders from the backup.
If those files/folders aren't in the same location on the customers machine then it won't work.

Very smart suggestion here ... Except I have no access to fiber (mad:

 

[brandonkick]

Server was out of space so they got a 4 drive NAS with 8TB of space for growth ... server only had like 1.5TB available. The cost to upgrade the server was a ton more than the NAS and all they use for data is Word, Excel, PDF's and Pictures

They have 2TB + of Word,Excel, PDF and Pictures?

That's just insane.....


At any rate, I still suggest you seed the data by disk. Send them 1TB at a time.

 

[Moltuae]

I suspect the vast majority of their data is historical and doesn't change on a daily basis, if ever.

If that's correct, you could create a full backup (or two) to an external HDD for someone to keep off-site, then schedule frequent incremental or differential backups to be uploaded to some off-site/cloud storage.

 

[thecomputerguy]

They have 2TB + of Word,Excel, PDF and Pictures?

That's just insane.....


At any rate, I still suggest you seed the data by disk. Send them 1TB at a time.

Yes they work with satellite images. (Some videos in there too).

 

[thecomputerguy]

Interestingly the Crashplan cloud backup made about 5% progress last night, so maybe the adoption didn't fail like I thought it did, we'll keep an eye on it for a couple weeks.

 

[layoric]

They should probably pay for a faster Internet connection to avoid the slow backup issues.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

First thing I'd recommend too...time to beef up that internet pipe. 1 meg up....LOL...yuck! With the plentiful Docsis 3 pipes with 10 and 20 meg up now....