Thank you all for great responses !!
I am thinking to discuss how Cloud option would fit in our environment. Sorry by mistake I have provided you wrong info that we have Upload speed 10Mbps, while we actually have 20Mbps !!
Maybe creating separate Topic will be good to discuss about Cloud options ?
@travisdh1 said in Tape backup advice ?:
@mobeen said in Tape backup advice ?:
Hi all,
For Offsite Backup I am thinking of Tape Backup option.
We are running Windows Server 2012 File Server with data around 5TB which needs to backed by Tape solution and rotate to offsite.
Tape is one of the option we are thinking of. I am thinking of Full Backup of data for offsite (on Tape) instead of copying Onsite Backup data.
Following are few queries comes to my mind :
- We may need to consider increase of data (around 5GB difference according to Incremental Backup daily happening) before getting Tape Backup, maybe we need to consider of 8TB or 10TB to backed up ?
Sure, but only if you insist on changing a tape once a week instead of twice a week. LTO 7 does 6TB native, and claims 15TB compressed. Planning wise, somewhere between those two extremes will be more realistic depending on how compressible your data is.
- Just wonder what will be the performance difference b/w Tape and External HDD ?
Years ago tape was horribly slow. That's more historic knowledge now than reality. A single, modern, tape drive is much faster than any HDD.
- What are all requirements for Tape Backup solution ? a) Tape Library b) Tape Drives c) Backup software, right ?
Seems to be a good list. I'd add driver, but that should be included with the Tape Drive/Library.
- So which model Tape library will suite us with what size of Tape Drives ? and rough pricing it may cost ?
For a new LTO 7 drive, looks like around $2300. Then $100 per data tape.
We use external USB drives here, but we also don't need to keep to a backup window time. If speed is important, tape can be very appealing today. Then if we assume 10TB external drives, it doesn't take long for costs of drives to be more than the initial investment of a tape drive and tapes.
In your shoes, I'd think a single LTO 7 drive and tapes to match would be the best way to get your offsite data. The costs of external hard drives of a size to match LTO 7 tapes just grows to quickly. Plus, you can use just that single drive without any library needed, keeping things much simpler to manage.
That's nice reply 
@scottalanmiller said in Tape backup advice ?:
@mobeen said in Tape backup advice ?:
@RojoLoco said in Tape backup advice ?:
Tape advice: use 3M 996, 2 inch width at 30 IPS. No Dolby noise reduction. Align to 250 nWb/m^2, then drive the shit out of the levels for rock music.
....oh, you meant backup tape. advice = don't do it.
If I don't want to go for cloud option, and needs to take backup to offsite, so do you people recommend External hard drive as a replacement to Tape ?
Isn't offsite tape a form of cloud? Cloud in this context is just another word for offsite.
Repeat : Not sure, how secure the cloud one will be in case of viruses, while in case of moving Tape or External HDD to offsite will give us peace of mind (no connection, no virus).
Let's say if I have resolved the issue of Bandwidth by increasing, how about pricing for Cloud ? and not sure, how much space I should buy ? maybe I need to test it by Free Trial if they have ?
Which cloud option do you suggest ? I think, Amazon Glacier is not suitable, as its for Cold Archive.
@scottalanmiller said in Tape backup advice ?:
@mobeen said in Tape backup advice ?:
@DustinB3403 said in Tape backup advice ?:
Why Tape, it's slow, difficult to transport and requires human interaction.
Push your backups off site to an online storage provider like BackBlaze or Amazon or Azure or anything else.
Tape, while cheap, still requires an upfront investment in hardware, using online storage does not.
If that's the case, how it will be I replace Tape with External Hard Drive ?
About Cloud, I am afraid of Bandwidth, we have 40Mbps down and 10Mbps. By the way, how you prefer to push the data to Cloud ? directly from Server to Cloud with some Agent or from Onsite Backup (QNAP NAS- my case) to Cloud with addons ? if
10mb/s will definitely make cloud storage options hard. Have you looked into increasing that as an option?
Yeah, I may need to check about options and cost we have with our ISP.
How about pushing the data to Cloud ? directly from Server or Onsite backup storage (NAS) ?
Not sure, how secure the cloud one will be in case of viruses, while in case of moving Tape or External HDD to offsite will give us peace of mind (no connection, no virus).
@RojoLoco said in Tape backup advice ?:
Tape advice: use 3M 996, 2 inch width at 30 IPS. No Dolby noise reduction. Align to 250 nWb/m^2, then drive the shit out of the levels for rock music.
....oh, you meant backup tape. advice = don't do it.
If I don't want to go for cloud option, and needs to take backup to offsite, so do you people recommend External hard drive as a replacement to Tape ?
@Tim_G said in Tape backup advice ?:
I didn't see the 3-2-1 rule in there. I'd work on that first. Off-site tape backup only accounts for 1 of the 3 copies of data, and 1 of the 2 types of media, and does cover the off-site part.
But you still need 2 more copies of data on another form of media.
You should always have on-site backup. Just think what would you do if you lost just one file? You'd have to pay hundreds of dollars to get your tape back, or drive to go get it, all just to restore one little file.
Sorry, I didn't mentioned about Onsite Backup, but we do have it. We are using EaseUS Todo backup server on Windows Server 2012 to push Incremental Backup daily to QNAP NAS box which resides Onsite.
@DustinB3403 said in Tape backup advice ?:
Why Tape, it's slow, difficult to transport and requires human interaction.
Push your backups off site to an online storage provider like BackBlaze or Amazon or Azure or anything else.
Tape, while cheap, still requires an upfront investment in hardware, using online storage does not.
If that's the case, how it will be I replace Tape with External Hard Drive ?
About Cloud, I am afraid of Bandwidth, we have 40Mbps down and 10Mbps. By the way, how you prefer to push the data to Cloud ? directly from Server to Cloud with some Agent or from Onsite Backup (QNAP NAS- my case) to Cloud with addons ? if
Hi all,
For Offsite Backup I am thinking of Tape Backup option.
We are running Windows Server 2012 File Server with data around 5TB which needs to backed by Tape solution and rotate to offsite.
Tape is one of the option we are thinking of. I am thinking of Full Backup of data for offsite (on Tape) instead of copying Onsite Backup data.
Following are few queries comes to my mind :
We may need to consider increase of data (around 5GB difference according to Incremental Backup daily happening) before getting Tape Backup, maybe we need to consider of 8TB or 10TB to backed up ?
Just wonder what will be the performance difference b/w Tape and External HDD ?
What are all requirements for Tape Backup solution ? a) Tape Library b) Tape Drives c) Backup software, right ?
For backup software, currently we have EaseUS Todo Server Backup software, if it works for Tape, then fine, if not, may be Veeam Endpoint Free (if it works) ?
So which model Tape library will suite us with what size of Tape Drives ? and rough pricing it may cost ?
Thanks !
@DustinB3403 said in Windows File Server very slow after Windows Server Patch for WannaCry (SMB).:
@mobeen Why is your file server and WSUS server on the same platform?
We were not using WSUS. After realizing about WannaCry we just planned to push the updates from Server to make sure all computers are patched, so setup WSUS on File Server itself.
I was not aware that WSUS will require good enough resources and as you said I was not sure if File Server and WSUS not should be on same server ?
I found issue to be with WSUS in my case. I have installed Windows Updates (SMB patch included) and WSUS on Windows Server 2012 R2 on same day, so I was not clear which one creating an issue, 1. Patch or 2. WSUS. And I was already seeing the SQL stuff Comsuming the maximum resources and Memory usage was some 80% which was not usual, so we uninstalled the WSUS as it's not very important for us, and Memory usage went down to 20%. File Server performance back to normal (good speed).
Few thoughts of Other IT pros:
Hello All,
After hearing about WannaCry, we have started to check each pc if patch for WannaCry is installed or not, if not install it.
In this process, we have made Windows Updates to Windows Server 2012 R2 and did restart to server in busy hours itself to make sure server is patched properly.
And after making updates, following are the patches are applied, which includes patch for SMB vulnerability :
And at the same day I had setup WSUS on same server to make Updates centrally.
Problem :
After doing this process, the File Server performance went down. Even the Backup took too long for small size of backup from Server.
Today, the same thing with File Server performance (very slow) and backup totally failed (we are pushing backups from Server with EaseUS Todo Backup Server to NAS-Shared Folder) and even not able to access shared folder on NAS from Server, while I can access from other computers to NAS Shared folders.
Note:
We have thread on SW (https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1995507-smb-very-slow-after-running-windows-update?page=2#entry-6903666) for same and I am posting and following up there also to get some solution while protecting server.
I understand the problem is with SMB (may be with specific version, v1?). What I am thinking of is, removing the patch and do some workaround to fix the vulnerability, if the patch is making File Server slow ?
Appreciate your suggestions !!
@scottalanmiller said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
@mobeen said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
I was looking for easy or GUI based option, and I think it's available for Ubuntu ?
Oh, is this a desktop?
It's CentOS server OS but it's on my personal laptop.
@scottalanmiller said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
@mobeen said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
@scottalanmiller said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
Plates mentions one way. Another is just snapshotting from the hypervisor. System Restore Point pre-dates widespread hypervisor level management of these things. It's a good technology and I am glad that Microsoft keeps it around, but it's no longer the only tool for this in the Windows world, either.
I understand about snapshot option available for VMs, but here I am looking for physical (or within OS).
Well you should fix that rather than working around it. But even on physical, LVM is the tool for the job. Windows got this from Linux, not the other way around
If you are suggesting LVM snapshot for CentOS, I don't know exact prerequisite to able to use LVM snapshot (may partition should be someway ?)
And I have gone through article about how to use LVM Snapshot Take snapshot and restore with LVM which seems to big process than Windows
I was looking for easy or GUI based option, and I think it's available for Ubuntu ?
And the main reason I want this kind of feature is to do experiments or nailing into linux more and restore if something went wrong which may help in production systems also in future.
@scottalanmiller said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
@mobeen said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
@stacksofplates said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
You can do LVM snapshots, backintime, rsnapshot, timeshift, dejadup, rdiff-backup, etc.
I've had some pretty good use with rsnapshot. Anything that doesn't change is hard linked so it looks like it does a full backup each time, but it's only using disk space for changes.
I've used backintime also but that seems to be a little more resource heavy.
I am not looking for backup things. And to be more specific, I am looking for Restore Point for CentOS Operating System, I might have specified in Title.
Right, but a restore point is a form of backup, just one that is not on separate media normally so technically it is not a backup, but it is a form of backup. Just a local one that fails with the original. If you stored your restore point on other media, it would indeed be a backup.
I understand, it's not actual backup because it's local.
I believe, with LVM snapshots, it seems, it will take snap/backup of system settings and data ? whereas in Windows it will take snapshot of System Settings only and consumes less space, time and even faster restore.
@scottalanmiller said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
Plates mentions one way. Another is just snapshotting from the hypervisor. System Restore Point pre-dates widespread hypervisor level management of these things. It's a good technology and I am glad that Microsoft keeps it around, but it's no longer the only tool for this in the Windows world, either.
I understand about snapshot option available for VMs, but here I am looking for physical (or within OS).
@stacksofplates said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
You can do LVM snapshots, backintime, rsnapshot, timeshift, dejadup, rdiff-backup, etc.
I've had some pretty good use with rsnapshot. Anything that doesn't change is hard linked so it looks like it does a full backup each time, but it's only using disk space for changes.
I've used backintime also but that seems to be a little more resource heavy.
I am not looking for backup things. And to be more specific, I am looking for Restore Point for CentOS Operating System, I might have specified in Title.
@DustinB3403 said in Is there any System restore point kind of thing available in Linux ?:
TimeShift is the go to solution for this.
Seems TimeShift is for Ubuntu or Debian variant.
How about CentOS ?
Hello there,
I am just wondering to know if there is any System Restore Point kind of things available in Linux (lets say CentOS) ?
I find this option to be very useful from my experience while working with Windows systems and curious to know if it's available for Linux to utilize it.
Great topic. I have requirement something like that.
Few more advanced features coming to my mind :