Backup System For 5 PC SMB
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@Dashrender said:
Again, move away from making regular images of the endpoints. That's home user thinking, not SMB thinking.
I'm still not sure I understand why. I would think the opposite. Home users do NOT do images. Yet, IMO an incremental image based backup is the best you can get.
Let's take for example a 1 person accounting office or a 2 person law firm. It seems to me the method I am looking for would be more efficient for them, not less.
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@BRRABill said:
I'm still not sure I understand why. I would think the opposite. Home users do NOT do images. Yet, IMO an incremental image based backup is the best you can get.
Well in the big enterprise space, even servers are more and more rarely being backed up. Backups are moving towards data only to allow for lower storage needs, faster backups, faster recoveries and more ability to retain data long term as the retention needs are lower.
Home users rarely do backups. When they do, either image backups or "file to cloud" tools appear to be the most common.
I would argue that the image based backup or block based with incrementals like you have that can create an image is very good, it is not the best. The best that is practical with what you are working with, sure. I'm not saying that you should consider anything "more" as that would push the bounds of the ridiculous, but I just don't want it to be missed that this would not be generally considered the best even for situations where data is stored locally.
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@BRRABill said:
Let's take for example a 1 person accounting office or a 2 person law firm. It seems to me the method I am looking for would be more efficient for them, not less.
If you are able to retrieve individual files from the backups (StorageCraft and Veeam both allow for this) then I would agree that that is a very good approach when you have a local backup target like AetherStore or a NAS device. When going to cloud, I would say that it is generally quite impractical unless, maybe if you have Gigabit connections like Google Fiber.
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@scottalanmiller said:
that this would not be generally considered the best even for situations where data is stored locally.You mean in terms of ease-of-use for the end user? Yeah, I agree with that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
When going to cloud, I would say that it is generally quite impractical unless, maybe if you have Gigabit connections like Google Fiber.
Really just for the initial seeding, or if the user has really big files. On our servers (and probably the PCs of people in a 5 PC or less office) the incrementals that are sent to the cloud are pretty small.
Most services have initial seeding options, some (such as Datto) for free.
We didn't use that on our servers. It took a day or so but the initial upload went fine. But we have 75/75 FIOS. I guess not everyone is lucky to have that.
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BTW: this is only my second posting, but this is really like live chatting with a bunch of my close IT buddies. Awesome!
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
that this would not be generally considered the best even for situations where data is stored locally.You mean in terms of ease-of-use for the end user? Yeah, I agree with that.
That was not my primary thought. Generally backups are managed (injecting personal assumption there, but I'm pretty sure that that is correct.) This is valid, but just not what I was getting at. I was referring to less network and systems overhead, more ability to rapidly restore, less cost, etc.
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@BRRABill said:
Really just for the initial seeding, or if the user has really big files. On our servers (and probably the PCs of people in a 5 PC or less office) the incrementals that are sent to the cloud are pretty small.
What is sent TO the cloud is of minor concern. The issue is how do you restore quickly if you have to pull down a massive image of your systems instead of only the data?
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@BRRABill said:
We didn't use that on our servers. It took a day or so but the initial upload went fine. But we have 75/75 FIOS. I guess not everyone is lucky to have that.
That's pretty good for a five person office. How big are your images? What would be the expected "pull down" time for a restore?
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Here's a thought -Assuming all 5 computers are identical, make a baseline image (though legally that might be touch, it would mean having a Open License copy of Windows to create images of, because you can't legally image OEMs to any machine but the one it came with). Deploy that image to all computer, and save all the data on the NAS. Backup the NAS and have a DVD/USB stick with a copy of the image on it. Update the Image yearly.
When you have a failure, virus infection, whatever - simply restore the image, do a bit of configuring, connect to the NAS and finished.
If the whole NAS dies, you've been backing that up to the cloud, get a new NAS and start the recovery.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What is sent TO the cloud is of minor concern. The issue is how do you restore quickly if you have to pull down a massive image of your systems instead of only the data?
Ah, I see what you are getting at.
Well, the only time you would need something like that would be in the case of a total catastrophe locally. (Or everything gets stolen.) I'd hope the solution includes some sort of way to spin up the image in the cloud. Again, like a Datto or the premium service ShadowProtect offers.
But I think what you are saying is, the risk/reward versus price to a 5-PC SMB just isn't worth it.
One of the options I had thought about (and someone mentioned) was one of these NAS devices that can replicate itself. I had been looking at the Synology which someone mentioned.
You have ShadowProtect (or Veeam) running the backups to the NAS on-site, which replicates, say, to my office (or the owner's home or whatever) so we could just grab that and bring it over.
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@BRRABill said:
Well, the only time you would need something like that would be in the case of a total catastrophe locally. (Or everything gets stolen.) I'd hope the solution includes some sort of way to spin up the image in the cloud. Again, like a Datto or the premium service ShadowProtect offers.
Well okay, this has its limitations. Only a few specific services offer this, most do not. This adds a lot of cost, of course. And you need to check to see if VDI is covered, because as desktops these are not covered by any normal licensing and you will need VDI licensing both for spinning up the VMs and for any devices that will be used to connect to them. VDI isn't a simple process. My guess is that those vendors (Datto actually uses ShadowProtect so that's the same solution twice more or less) leave all licensing liability up to you, which sucks as that is super expensive.
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@BRRABill said:
One of the options I had thought about (and someone mentioned) was one of these NAS devices that can replicate itself. I had been looking at the Synology which someone mentioned.
All of the cost effective small NAS units use Linux under the hood and RSYNC is the tool used across the board for this. You'll find the same capability in every small device.
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@BRRABill said:
You have ShadowProtect (or Veeam) running the backups to the NAS on-site, which replicates, say, to my office (or the owner's home or whatever) so we could just grab that and bring it over.
Exactly. And you can restore over the WAN if necessary and 99.99% of the time you'd do a restore from the local NAS, not a distant one, for super fast restores.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Well okay, this has its limitations. Only a few specific services offer this, most do not. This adds a lot of cost, of course. And you need to check to see if VDI is covered, because as desktops these are not covered by any normal licensing and you will need VDI licensing both for spinning up the VMs and for any devices that will be used to connect to them. VDI isn't a simple process. My guess is that those vendors (Datto actually uses ShadowProtect so that's the same solution twice more or less) leave all licensing liability up to you, which sucks as that is super expensive.
Yeah in my testing of this, licensing becomes an issue. I have not had to officially do it yet (I worked around it with an OEM key workaround in testing) but am assured MS will help in a disaster recovery scenario.
You are right it's basically the same solution, twice. Though it's interesting that they are pretty different. Nice technology, though.
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@BRRABill said:
Yeah in my testing of this, licensing becomes an issue. I have not had to officially do it yet (I worked around it with an OEM key workaround in testing) but am assured MS will help in a disaster recovery scenario.
Yes, MS will help you pay the high cost of moving to VDI licensing which includes $100 per year fee for every device that will look at the VDI instance. MS will not help you work around VDI licensing, of course. Especially if you built VDI into your planning. That you are relying on VDI as part of the plan, you will most certainly have to go through a licensing process for it.
But yes, MS is not going to try to hold you up. They literally run for that licensing money so they will do everything that they can to help.
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@scottalanmiller said:
But yes, MS is not going to try to hold you up. They literally run for that licensing money so they will do everything that they can to help.
I was under the impression they let it slide in disaster recovery scenarios, but I am not 100% sure about that. I'm talking about BMR, not VDI. You're only using it until your get the actual server/desktop restored.
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@BRRABill said:
I was under the impression they let it slide in disaster recovery scenarios, but I am not 100% sure about that. I'm talking about BMR, not VDI. You're only using it until your get the actual server/desktop restored.
I've never heard that suggested. What is done for server DR and desktop DR are very different things.
Systems like Datto and StorageCraft that are hosted and doing "in the cloud" recovery are always virtual and that means VDI every time with MS desktop products. So no BMR option going that route until you fail back on premises. So you'd be looking at VDI for the situation and products that you described.
Are you sure that you've heard this referenced to VDI / desktop OSes and not just to servers (where VDI does not exist.)
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@BRRABill said:
You're only using it until your get the actual server/desktop restored.
VDI doesn't exist for servers, so anything that blends the two at the discussion level would not imply anything for VDI.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Are you sure that you've heard this referenced to VDI / desktop OSes and not just to servers (where VDI does not exist.)
It was actually in reference to a BMR. I'll have to try to virtually boot a desktop I have backed up and see what happens. That'll be for another day.
