Workgroup Backup - What Media?

[BigAl.NZ]

Hi Guys,

I am thinking about backing up our 7 PC workgroup. We dont have a
server or a domain controller, but we do have a spare PC which can
host the backup device.

I think at this stage it would be sufficent to backup everthing under
Documents N Settings on each XP PC.

I was looking at using StorageCraft Shadow Protect (anything better
out there?) but the question is what media to backup to?

Some people have suggested tape, but tape seems so old school. What is
the best, and most appropriate way? Why not just two NAS's?

I intend the backup to be two set, one off site, with nightly
incrementals weekyl fulls.

Also, each computer on the workgroup has a user account for each user
of the workgroup, for sharing permissions.

I assume the best way to tackle this is to use a backup account, which
can be created on each PC, and then just backup \\computername\C$
\Documents and Settings\* ?

Cheers

-Al

 

[Phillip Windell]

Hi Guys,

I am thinking about backing up our 7 PC workgroup. We dont have a
server or a domain controller, but we do have a spare PC which can
host the backup device.

Buy a big fat USB Hard Drive and plug it into the "spare PC". It is cheaper
than a Tape Backup System,...is a lot faster,...and holds a lot more. Share
it out to the Administrator Account. I am assuming that the Adminstrator
Account has the same password on all the machines,...if not than create an
account (every machine) for this purpose,...maybe called "BackupUser" or
similar. At a minimum it should be in the Backup Operators Group on each
machine.

Use the Backup Utility that is already in XP. Create the Backup job and set
it to "backup to File" and use a file name and UNC Path to the USB Hard
Drive (like maybe \\SparePC\e$\workstation1.bkf). Be sure to save the
Backup Job to a file as well so you can pull up that Job when you want it
rather than recreate it over and over each time (like maybe
"MyBackupJob.bks").

Use the Scheduler to schedule the backup jobs so that they do not completely
overlap each other. If there is too much overlap you can have write errors
due to I/O overload on the PC holding the USB drive.

Obviously each workstion should use its own target Backup file. I recommend
the filename be the same as the Machine Name it came from, or some other
reasonable way to identify it.

Testing:
Running the job manually is *NOT* the same thing as running it from the
scheduler,...the scheduler uses the Account you tell it to use when setting
up the schedule,...but running the job manually runs in under the currently
logged in user's account. So test it simply by using it. Check to see that
the "BKF" Files are on the USB drive where they should be after it runs.
The time/date on the File will tell when the job finished. The Backup
Utility also will keep a Log File of the backup job buried within the
folders of the User Profile of the user account that the Schedule ran under.
There may be some things in the Event Log under Adminsitrative Tools as well
..

There is nothing "visible" while the scheduled job is running,...that is the
whole idea,... in the background,..out of the way,...invisible.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[BigAl.NZ]

Buy a big fat USB Hard Drive and plug it into the "spare PC".  It is cheaper
than a Tape Backup System,...is a lot faster,...and holds a lot more.  Share
it out to the Administrator Account.  I am assuming that the Adminstrator
Account has the same password on all the machines,...if not than create an
account (every machine) for this purpose,...maybe called "BackupUser" or
similar.  At a minimum it should be in the Backup Operators Group on each
machine.

Use the Backup Utility that is already in XP.  Create the Backup job and set
it to "backup to File" and use a file name and UNC Path to the USB Hard
Drive (like maybe \\SparePC\e$\workstation1.bkf).  Be sure to save the
Backup Job to a file as well so you can pull up that Job when you want it
rather than recreate it over and over each time (like maybe
"MyBackupJob.bks").

Use the Scheduler to schedule the backup jobs so that they do not completely
overlap each other.  If there is too much overlap you can have write errors
due to  I/O overload on the PC holding the USB drive.

Obviously each workstion should use its own target Backup file.  I recommend
the filename be the same as the Machine Name it came from, or some other
reasonable way to identify it.

Testing:
Running the job manually is *NOT* the same thing as running it from the
scheduler,...the scheduler uses the Account you tell it to use when setting
up the schedule,...but running the job manually runs in under the currently
logged in user's account.  So test it simply by using it.  Check to see that
the "BKF" Files are on the USB drive where they should be after it runs.
The time/date on the File will tell when the job finished.  The Backup
Utility also will keep a Log File of the backup job buried within the
folders of the User Profile of the user account that the Schedule ran under.
There may be some things in the Event Log under Adminsitrative Tools as well
.

There is nothing "visible" while the scheduled job is running,...that is the
whole idea,... in the background,..out of the way,...invisible.

--
Phillip Windellwww.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

Hmmm, by n large I like it. But what systems are in place with a USB
drive to tell you when the hard disk is failing for example?

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) wrote

I am thinking about backing up our 7 PC workgroup. We dont have a
server or a domain controller, but we do have a spare PC which can
host the backup device.

I think at this stage it would be sufficent to backup everthing under
Documents N Settings on each XP PC.

I was looking at using StorageCraft Shadow Protect (anything
better out there?) but the question is what media to backup to?

Some people have suggested tape, but tape seems so old school.

Yep, well passed its useby date now.

What is the best, and most appropriate way? Why not just two NAS's?

No reason why not.

I intend the backup to be two set, one off site, with nightly incrementals weekyl fulls.

 

[Rod Speed]

Hmmm, by n large I like it. But what systems are in place with a USB
drive to tell you when the hard disk is failing for example?

You can get the SMART data for some USB drives.

If the external drive is eSATA instead of USB, you can almost always get the drive SMART data.

 

[Arno]

Hi Guys,

I am thinking about backing up our 7 PC workgroup. We dont have a
server or a domain controller, but we do have a spare PC which can
host the backup device.

I think at this stage it would be sufficent to backup everthing under
Documents N Settings on each XP PC.

I was looking at using StorageCraft Shadow Protect (anything better
out there?) but the question is what media to backup to?

Some people have suggested tape, but tape seems so old school. What is
the best, and most appropriate way? Why not just two NAS's?

There is no "old school" here, just different characteristics.

For high-reliability, slow access and low cost per GB, but relatively
high fixed costs, go for professional tape (not the DAT trash!)
Tape also gives you easy removal to off-site and it is very hard
to destroy archival-tape accidentially. Even tearing can typically
be repaired and all data recoverd. Also tape has a well-known
ageing profile.


For cheap, fast access, but less reliable and potentially
catastrophically failing, use spinning disks.

For all the drwawbacks of disks, but with the possibility to
do multiple, independent copies that can be removed off-site,
use USB HDDs or other removable drives.

For HDDs, drive healt monitoring is essential. For that you need
to understand HDDs.

I intend the backup to be two set, one off site, with nightly
incrementals weekyl fulls.

The agreed wisdom in systadmin circles is that three independent
media sets is tha absolute minimum.

Arno

 

[Alen Teplitsky]

There is no "old school" here, just different characteristics.

For high-reliability, slow access and low cost per GB, but relatively
high fixed costs, go for professional tape (not the DAT trash!)
Tape also gives you easy removal to off-site and it is very hard
to destroy archival-tape accidentially. Even tearing can typically
be repaired and all data recoverd. Also tape has a well-known
ageing profile.

For cheap, fast access, but less reliable and potentially
catastrophically failing, use spinning disks.

For all the drwawbacks of disks, but with the possibility to
do multiple, independent copies that can be removed off-site,
use USB HDDs or other removable drives.

For HDDs, drive healt monitoring is essential. For that you need
to understand HDDs.


The agreed wisdom in systadmin circles is that three independent
media sets is tha absolute minimum.

Arno

we're about to upgrade our backup system based on DLT tape to LTO-4
tape. doing disk backups is too expensive and you have to buy at least
2 backup devices for redundancy. We use Evault which is now i365 and a
division of Seagate. With tape once you have a backup you put it in a
safe place and it's hard to overwrite. with disk it's a lot easier to
change a setting and wipe out years of backups. and LTO-4 tapes which
hold 800GB/1600GB are around $55 a tape these days which is a lot
cheaper than disk

 

[Phillip Windell]

Hmmm, by n large I like it. But what systems are in place with a USB
drive to tell you when the hard disk is failing for example?

What is in place to tell you that anything else you use for backups is
failing? My expensive tape drives which probably cost more than half of
your 7 machines put together, do nothing more than blink a yellow LED if the
need a cleaning tape run through them. Beyone that, if they fail,..they
just fail.

Beyond Rod's reply,...the drive just quits working and the Backup Jobs fail
to run properly,...and now you know the drive is bad. You need to at least
check every day that the backups occured,..which you can tell by the
time/date on the files on the USB drive. The files sizes should fairly
consistantly stay the same size to a point. A huge drop in file size may
mean that the backup didn't complete.

If the drive fails all you lost were the backups,...your machines are still
running. So you replace the drive, the next schedule comes around (or
manually run them) and you have fresh new backups again. Unlike with a
complex backup system there is nothing to reconfigure, re-install, or
rebuild,...you just plug in a new drive and make sure it has the same drive
letter and the share is intact. You can also alternate drives on different
days if you buy more than one USB drive so you always have as least one
other backup available.

In the end it is no more drastic than a tape drive failing, a tape failing,
or a drive that needs that cleaning tape run through it. All of those will
spell a "failed backup" either way you look at it.

The days of tape drives are going by the way-side. The storage capacity of
machines is outpacing the capacity of the Tape Drive Systems and also the
speed at which the tapes systems can complete the backups. What happens
when the backups for one day take almost the whole day to complete? You'd
be running an almost continuous non-stop backup.

If you want to see where the future of Data Backup is going look at these
videos. In this system Tape Backup are not the primary media and are only
used for certain archival purposes. The primary backup media is a second
"big" File Server, or external drives, or a NAS

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007: Videos
http://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter/dataprotectionmanager/en/us/videos.aspx


--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Windell]

Hmmm, by n large I like it. But what systems are in place with a USB
drive to tell you when the hard disk is failing for example?

Consider this. A lot of posts are suggeting expensive and elaborate backup
systems. I'm not "knocking" those,..they're good stuff,..and they cost
losts of $$$$$ for a reason.

The reason I gave a very simplistic solution is,.....because,.....well quite
simply,...you have 7 machines in a Workgroup.

After you have spent tons of money on real Servers,..with a real Active
Directory Domain structure, with a real Mail Servers, a server based
enterprise level Anti-Virus/AntiSpam/Snti spyware system, business-critical
Application Servers taylored by specialized vendors specifically for your
type of business,......and then maybe even a full time IT person to take
care of all of it,....then I'll suggest a big fat juicy expensive Tape
Jukebox systems with all the trimming that cost more than my car.

I think with the state of the economy right now spending has to be
determined with the big picture in mind.

But for now if you want something a little better than a simple USB drive
try the Linksys NAS200 with a pair of Terabyte drives rigged up with RAID-1
Mirroring for redundancy. It is only around $100 without the drives. It
can email you with alerts if it detects problems with either of the Drives
it contains. It is still "home-user" quality but it is a step up from a
simple USB drive.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Arno]

we're about to upgrade our backup system based on DLT tape to LTO-4
tape. doing disk backups is too expensive and you have to buy at least
2 backup devices for redundancy. We use Evault which is now i365 and a
division of Seagate. With tape once you have a backup you put it in a
safe place and it's hard to overwrite. with disk it's a lot easier to
change a setting and wipe out years of backups. and LTO-4 tapes which
hold 800GB/1600GB are around $55 a tape these days which is a lot
cheaper than disk

Yes, does not surpise me. Tape is superiour if you can handle
the initial cost. The only thing worse with tape is access time.
But if you need that, do one spinning backup on a NAS and a
second-level backup on tape.

Arno

 

[Leythos]

What is in place to tell you that anything else you use for backups is
failing? My expensive tape drives which probably cost more than half of
your 7 machines put together, do nothing more than blink a yellow LED if the
need a cleaning tape run through them. Beyone that, if they fail,..they
just fail.

And yet most of us use software to do the backup that will alert (email)
when a drive needs cleaned, sends full backup reports to us each day,
and for those that don't have third party software we will right simple
batch scripts that will email the backup/verify logs to us and we can
see the errors if any.

The problem with USB drives is reliability. Tape is very reliable as
long as you clean it and don't buy those cheap third party drives, DAT-
72, LTO2/3 are good, but anything Travan should be avoided.

Yes, a good LTO2/SCSI system will cost about $1000 with 10 tapes, but
the tapes last more than a year, store in small areas, and you can
easily take them "off site" for DR.

USB drives work also, but they are MORE prone to failure and bulky and
of you buy as many as are needed to comply with SOX or other audits, you
actually spend more than of you bought tape.

 

[Phillip Windell]

And yet most of us use software to do the backup that will alert (email)
when a drive needs cleaned, sends full backup reports to us each day,
and for those that don't have third party software we will right simple
batch scripts that will email the backup/verify logs to us and we can
see the errors if any.

Yea,..but,...The guy has 7 machines and a Workgroup! I wouldn't expect
anyone to spend more on the Backup System than the entire total cost of all
the equipment that make up the LAN

I gave a very simple low cost solution for a very simple low cost network.

....and I did tell him about the logs and to verify the "bkf" after the
backup runs as a way of "keeping and eye on it".

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Windell]

Hey Phillip... agree with your thoughts. I run into this stuff every day.
You gotta design for the actual requirements verses expense, not some
technical geewizzery.

Anyhow, one backup program I love and that fits into that common sense
category is "Bacup4all". Ever used it? Costs about $50. Will do exact copy
scheduled backups as well as zipped or compressed and also all of the
various flavors (i.e. incremental, full, differential, mirror, etc).

Hi Frank!

No I haven't heard of that one.
But I like the "geewizzery" term,...I may have to keep that one.

I suppose combining Bacup4all with the Linksys NAS200 I mentioned with its
RAID-1 capability and its ability to email multiple email addresses with any
detected "drive problems would work out pretty well and cheap. It is only
around $90-$100 (without the drives), and you could use it for other things
too besides storing backups. Heck you could store most of the material on
it instead of the local machines and reduce the need for the backups in the
first place.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Windell]

Yes, does not surpise me. Tape is superiour if you can handle
the initial cost. The only thing worse with tape is access time.
But if you need that, do one spinning backup on a NAS and a
second-level backup on tape.

Yes,..I like that method. I do the two-level backup like that too,..and
store the tapes in a fireproof safe. But I also have a lot more than 7
machines in a Workgroup.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Chris Barnes]

Buy a big fat USB Hard Drive and plug it into the "spare PC". It is cheaper
than a Tape Backup System,...is a lot faster,...and holds a lot more.

.... rest of post deleted...


This is really good advice - but I would add 1 more step to it.

Buy TWO "big fat USB Hard Drives". Every Friday, copy everything on the
one in the office to the the spare one, then take it home with you.

 

[Phillip Windell]

... rest of post deleted...


This is really good advice - but I would add 1 more step to it.

Buy TWO "big fat USB Hard Drives". Every Friday, copy everything on the
one in the office to the the spare one, then take it home with you.

Yes, I mentioned that in the second post somewhere.

I have a much larger network than the OP but I still use something similar
to what I described to him.

I backup most things as a "backup to file" to just a simple USB 1-Terabyte
HardDrive. The jobs all repeat nightly. Then once a week I backup the USB
drive to tape and put it in a fireproof safe. I keep 4 weeks of tapes
before recycling them. It takes a full day for the Tapes to run,...hence
why I don't do it daily,...the Tape drives would never stop.

All the servers themselves run hot swapable RAID Arrays. So in reality the
loss of a drive doesn't have much impact in the first place. The backups
are more to protect data corruption or deletion than they are to protect
from failed drives.

So far the worst that has ever happened is that I had to restore a single
Folder from the file server that someone mistakenly deleted.

There have been maybe two failed drives over time,..that were just simply
immediately replaced,..they rebuilt automatically and the machines never
stopped running due to it all being hot-swapable.

--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Phillip Windell]

Thought tape was a complete re-write system whereas
disk can be just changed files?

No we are not "copying files" to the Disks. It is actually a function of
any decent Backup Utility to do a "backup-to-file". The finished backup is
a *single* file that may be at least somewhat similar to an "image file".
It produces the same result during a Restore that restoring from a Tape
would do.

In the case of a full restore with a "full backup with system state" you
would do a basic OS installation including the backup utility. Then plug in
the USB drive and do a full restore with the backup utility from the stored
backup on the USB drive.

Drive Imaging is not suitable for doing backups and is pretty much a "no go"
if the machine is a Domain Controller. With Domain Controllers you end up
with Active Directory Database conflicts. Domain Controllers must be
restored using Active Directory Restore Mode and all the little gory details
that go along with that. Much of the time DCs are never "restored",..they
are rebuilt from scratch and promoted to a DC and let replication do the
rest,...hence why you always want at least two DCs,...and hence why you
don't want a bunch of other "stuff" installed & running on the DC.

With other Servers you can end up with expired "machine accounts" that
causes authentication to fail,...however that can usually be cleaned up by
unjoining then rejoining to the Domain. Workstations are not so much of a
problem and I have used imaging for them.


--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Leythos]

Yea,..but,...The guy has 7 machines and a Workgroup! I wouldn't expect
anyone to spend more on the Backup System than the entire total cost of all
the equipment that make up the LAN

It's all about how much the data is worth, most times people don't value
their data until they experience a loss.

DAT-72 is not a bad technology and they even have USB2 external DAT-72
drives, as long as people clean the drive with the "YELLOW" clean drive
light comes on they work fine. About $650 and tapes are cheap.

 

[Phillip Windell]

DAT-72 is not a bad technology and they even have USB2 external DAT-72
drives, as long as people clean the drive with the "YELLOW" clean drive
light comes on they work fine. About $650 and tapes are cheap.

Yea that wouldn't be too bad. I used to use some older DAT drives here.

But it is still a workgroup. Nothing is centralized. He either needs one
of those in every workstation or go through all the "headstands &
cartwheels" to backup the other machines from one workstation.

With a shared USB drive, or a cheap low-end NAS like the Linksys NAS200 all
the machines can easily push their backup to the storage device
independently with their own copy of NTBackup on different schedules.

But then I guess you could use the DAT drive to backup the USB drive once a
week. That is actually how I do it here,..they just aren't DAT drives, they
are DLT and LTO's.

I think the biggest problem here,...that he doesn't realise he has yet,...
is the "7 machines in a workgroup". Yea, I keep coming back to that.

What I would do in his case is buy a "real" server with built in
hot-swappable RAID, and promote it to a DC . Encourage users to store the
"important stuff" on shares on the server or use AD's Folder Redirection to
store the MyDocs and stuff on the Server. Have a good quality internal Tape
Drive in it that was big enough to hold everything on a single tape and do
nightly backups. Then I would do a full system state backup of the Server
OS at least once a week. If the tape was big enough then do everything with
system state nightly.
The worksgroup would be gone.

I wouldn't like it being a single DC but if backups were made diligently it
would be survivable. I'm not a big fan of SBS but that might be a good
solution.

It would be a bit more money,..but it would be money well spent and his
business would be in a better postion for future expansion.


--
Phillip Windell
www.wandtv.com

The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft,
or anyone else associated with me, including my cats.
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[Leythos]

I think the biggest problem here,...that he doesn't realise he has yet,...
is the "7 machines in a workgroup". Yea, I keep coming back to that.

What I would do in his case is buy a "real" server with built in
hot-swappable RAID, and promote it to a DC . Encourage users to store the
"important stuff" on shares on the server or use AD's Folder Redirection to
store the MyDocs and stuff on the Server. Have a good quality internal Tape
Drive in it that was big enough to hold everything on a single tape and do
nightly backups. Then I would do a full system state backup of the Server
OS at least once a week. If the tape was big enough then do everything with
system state nightly.
The worksgroup would be gone.

I wouldn't like it being a single DC but if backups were made diligently it
would be survivable. I'm not a big fan of SBS but that might be a good
solution.

It would be a bit more money,..but it would be money well spent and his
business would be in a better postion for future expansion.

We see a LOT of these types of customers, data scattered all over the
place, etc... SBS is one of the best, easiest to support, manageable
solutions a nontechnical customer can get, and if offers so much more
than most people know.

In a worst case solution, a Lunix box, RAID-1, external USB drives as
the backup solution, all data stored on the nix box.

Best case solution, SBS 2008 Standard, and happy thoughts - oh, and USB
drives for backup media.