Agent and Agentless Backups

dbeato

@scottalanmiller said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

Ah, Datto has added agentless now, but it was doing this before adding that.

Agentless backup for Datto specifically is only for VMware environments not Hyperv.

stacksofplates

As much as I like to argue with @scottalanmiller I have to agree that usually agents are easier.

Because the agent based backup meant that to recover the entire guest, I would have to mount a special ISO, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as "restore this backup from 15 minutes ago to Host 2".

That is in no way a requirement of agent based systems. This sounds more like there isn't a reliable way to reproduce a system and the data isn't on a separate volume. Make sure the systems can be rebuilt immediately and you can just reattach the data and be done.

Even with something as simple as ReaR, you define your skeleton volumes you want backed up and include that in your template.

Example (I'll use Ansible since that's what I know):

The template would have this in it:

BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE=('{{ backup_dirs | join("' '") }}')

You'd have a list (in this case called backup_dirs) that gets iterated over:

backup_dirs:
  - /home/*
  - /data/*
  - /var/www/html/*

That backup_dirs list is specific to each machine when it's created.

The agent based stuff is really simple because it can very easily be specific for each machine and always be specific when the systems are built without any work after the initial set up.

stacksofplates

And again, this is only for systems that have data actually stored in them. Stuff like DNS servers can immediately be rebuilt with just definitions like this:

{% for key, value in records.iteritems() %}
{{ key }}   {{ value.type }}   {{ dns_subnet }}.{{ value.last }}
{% endfor %}

and the records dictionary looks like this:

dns_subnet: 192.168.0

records:
  router: { type: A, last: 1 }
  hypervisor1: { type: A, last: 2 }
  hypervisor2: { type: A, last: 3 }
  fileserver: { type: A, last: 4 }

This is specific to BIND (and you'd probably use Unbound anyway, but the logic is still the same) but it gives you awesome flexibility. So now I can run 1000 replicas if I want all with the same data and all changed at the same time, and my SVN system stores the data.

scottalanmiller

@dustinb3403 said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

@scottalanmiller said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

@dustinb3403 said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

@scottalanmiller said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

I don't know a single shop that I've worked with in years now that had an environment where agentless could be used reliably in that way.

But that is you, in your limited experience there, with clients that have opt'd for bad options. Either the agentless systems at the time just sucked, or literally did not have these kinds of features.

You can't go and lump in everything today as "oh it's bad because it's agentless".

Well take your environment for example. Guaranteed agentless can't do it all alone without other backup mechanisms doing the heavy lifting. guaranteed.

Also, I have no idea what you're talking about here, agentless DID do everything that we needed, guaranteed.

How do you know? You are stating the exact attitude that I'm warning about. Unless you've done a deep investigation into your workloads and their ability to be supported by this type of backup, you can't say this. Everyone who gets this wrong states it just like this, this is exactly what we went through with the client and it turned out that they had no reliable backups and had never researched what was needed for their workloads.

Are you saying you have zero workloads that aren't handled by your agentless system? How tiny is the company? Even QuickBooks isn't supported. I've never heard of any company of any size that could just use them. Things like MySQL are not supported without scripting an agent (even if the native one) to handle the reliability piece.

It's just not reasonable to think that the company has an IT staff and only workloads that agentless can handle. That's rare to the point of being a theoretical niche.

This would require things like MS SQL Server to be the only data store in the organization. Typically its' the only one supported. I know of no ERP that can be done agentless, no distributed database, etc.

Obsolesce

@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

As much as I like to argue with @scottalanmiller I have to agree that usually agents are easier.

Because the agent based backup meant that to recover the entire guest, I would have to mount a special ISO, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as "restore this backup from 15 minutes ago to Host 2".

That is in no way a requirement of agent based systems. This sounds more like there isn't a reliable way to reproduce a system and the data isn't on a separate volume. Make sure the systems can be rebuilt immediately and you can just reattach the data and be done.

Even with something as simple as ReaR, you define your skeleton volumes you want backed up and include that in your template.

Example (I'll use Ansible since that's what I know):

The template would have this in it:
BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE=('{{ backup_dirs | join("' '") }}')
You'd have a list (in this case called backup_dirs) that gets iterated over:
backup_dirs:
  - /home/*
  - /data/*
  - /var/www/html/*
That backup_dirs list is specific to each machine when it's created.

The agent based stuff is really simple because it can very easily be specific for each machine and always be specific when the systems are built without any work after the initial set up.

Just because a system is backed up via agentless backup doesn't mean the VMs data can't be separate. I could have a VM backed up agentlessly that has its data on a separate volume / virtual disk... then I could instantly restore the VM and OS, reattach the data, and not have to rebuild shit.

Obsolesce

It works both ways. Do what's best for a given environment. Not every damn system in a given environment can have the exact same backup configuration. In the one I work with for example, I use both agentless and agent based backups... because it's not one size fits all.

Obsolesce

But I will say it's a lot faster to restore the agentless backups that I either needed to restore or test restored.

stacksofplates

@obsolesce said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
As much as I like to argue with @scottalanmiller I have to agree that usually agents are easier.

Because the agent based backup meant that to recover the entire guest, I would have to mount a special ISO, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as "restore this backup from 15 minutes ago to Host 2".

That is in no way a requirement of agent based systems. This sounds more like there isn't a reliable way to reproduce a system and the data isn't on a separate volume. Make sure the systems can be rebuilt immediately and you can just reattach the data and be done.

Even with something as simple as ReaR, you define your skeleton volumes you want backed up and include that in your template.

Example (I'll use Ansible since that's what I know):

The template would have this in it:
BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE=('{{ backup_dirs | join("' '") }}')
You'd have a list (in this case called backup_dirs) that gets iterated over:
backup_dirs:
  - /home/*
  - /data/*
  - /var/www/html/*
That backup_dirs list is specific to each machine when it's created.

The agent based stuff is really simple because it can very easily be specific for each machine and always be specific when the systems are built without any work after the initial set up.
Just because a system is backed up via agentless backup doesn't mean the VMs data can't be separate. I could have a VM backed up agentlessly that has its data on a separate volume / virtual disk... then I could instantly restore the VM and OS, reattach the data, and not have to rebuild shit.

That's not why I said that. If you have to fully restore a system from an ISO the agent built, then it doesn't sound like the data was separate.

Obsolesce

@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

@obsolesce said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
As much as I like to argue with @scottalanmiller I have to agree that usually agents are easier.

Because the agent based backup meant that to recover the entire guest, I would have to mount a special ISO, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as "restore this backup from 15 minutes ago to Host 2".

That is in no way a requirement of agent based systems. This sounds more like there isn't a reliable way to reproduce a system and the data isn't on a separate volume. Make sure the systems can be rebuilt immediately and you can just reattach the data and be done.

Even with something as simple as ReaR, you define your skeleton volumes you want backed up and include that in your template.

Example (I'll use Ansible since that's what I know):

The template would have this in it:
BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE=('{{ backup_dirs | join("' '") }}')
You'd have a list (in this case called backup_dirs) that gets iterated over:
backup_dirs:
  - /home/*
  - /data/*
  - /var/www/html/*
That backup_dirs list is specific to each machine when it's created.

The agent based stuff is really simple because it can very easily be specific for each machine and always be specific when the systems are built without any work after the initial set up.
Just because a system is backed up via agentless backup doesn't mean the VMs data can't be separate. I could have a VM backed up agentlessly that has its data on a separate volume / virtual disk... then I could instantly restore the VM and OS, reattach the data, and not have to rebuild shit.
That's not why I said that. If you have to fully restore a system from an ISO the agent built, then it doesn't sound like the data was separate.

No I meant you would boot to a recovery/boot ISO so you can restore the server from within the recovery encironment

stacksofplates

@obsolesce said in Agent and Agentless Backups:

@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
@obsolesce said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
@stacksofplates said in Agent and Agentless Backups:
As much as I like to argue with @scottalanmiller I have to agree that usually agents are easier.

Because the agent based backup meant that to recover the entire guest, I would have to mount a special ISO, it wasn't nearly as straightforward as "restore this backup from 15 minutes ago to Host 2".

That is in no way a requirement of agent based systems. This sounds more like there isn't a reliable way to reproduce a system and the data isn't on a separate volume. Make sure the systems can be rebuilt immediately and you can just reattach the data and be done.

Even with something as simple as ReaR, you define your skeleton volumes you want backed up and include that in your template.

Example (I'll use Ansible since that's what I know):

The template would have this in it:
BACKUP_PROG_INCLUDE=('{{ backup_dirs | join("' '") }}')
You'd have a list (in this case called backup_dirs) that gets iterated over:
backup_dirs:
  - /home/*
  - /data/*
  - /var/www/html/*
That backup_dirs list is specific to each machine when it's created.

The agent based stuff is really simple because it can very easily be specific for each machine and always be specific when the systems are built without any work after the initial set up.
Just because a system is backed up via agentless backup doesn't mean the VMs data can't be separate. I could have a VM backed up agentlessly that has its data on a separate volume / virtual disk... then I could instantly restore the VM and OS, reattach the data, and not have to rebuild shit.
That's not why I said that. If you have to fully restore a system from an ISO the agent built, then it doesn't sound like the data was separate.
No I meant you would boot to a recovery/boot ISO so you can restore the server from within the recovery encironment

You're missing what I'm saying. If the data volume is separate you just attach it to a fresh VM and don't have to do that at all. The only time you need to rebuild from that recovery environment is when either the data isn't separate or you can't reliably reproduce the OS volume.