> <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: Kurt Buff > > > >> How much data are you talking about, and how volatile is it? > > > > Our staff VM has a home folder share with about 1TB of data. It's used by > about 250 users for their Documents and Desktop folder redirects. > > Volatility == rate of change in data over time. You haven't answered > that question.
How do you accurately measure Volatility? My best guess would be "Not very volatile". Most data is saved and unchanged. > How long do you need to keep your data - that is, when someone asks > for a restore, how far back in time should they be able to go? A week, > a month, a year, 5 years? I have no SLAs requiring a specific backup period. We have had the previous practice of 3 weeks of backups. > Do you need to keep data offsite for DR purposes? USB Disks transport > as easily as tapes. We will be setting up a 2nd EqualLogic array this year in a remote site to with the intended purpose of replicating our 1st for Disaster Recovery. So, no DR will not be the concern. > But frankly, with only 1tb of data to preserve, it's looking more and > more to me like a few 1-4tb USB disks and robocopy might be all you > need, along with a spreadsheet and a set of labels to keep track of > it. Agreed. This should not be a difficult solution. For some reason, when you try to do something beyond the robocopy solution and have a "industry backed" solution, things tend to get difficult/expensive. > If you need to preserve the VM as well, that's not much more work - a > bit of scripting to down the VM, copy it to a USB disk then fire it up > again could easily fit in with the rest of the job. We would love to have our VM's fully backed up, that would be ideal. But we have moved beyond that requirement. ---- I just checked my Windows Backup progress... 3%. At this rate it should only take 14 days to backup. Oh joy... --Matt Ross Ephrata School District ----- Original Message ----- From: Kurt Buff [mailto:[email protected]] To: [email protected] Sent: Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:29:37 -0800 Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Wisdom of the crowds: Backup > On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 9:36 AM, Matthew W. Ross > <[email protected]> wrote: > > From: Kurt Buff > > > >> How much data are you talking about, and how volatile is it? > > > > Our staff VM has a home folder share with about 1TB of data. It's used by > about 250 users for their Documents and Desktop folder redirects. > > > >> Given your only requirement, and if the data is not terribly > >> volatile, and there isn't too much of it, I'd suggest dispensing with > >> backups and relying on VSS. > > > > Dispensing with backups is not an option, but I've already enabled shadow > copies on the server. > > > >> If you want more than that, you might do just fine with a couple of > >> multi-terabyte USB drives attached to the server and robocopy - again, > >> depending on the size of your data, and your history requirements. > > > > I've considered this old trick: make a VHD on a remote share, mount it as > a local drive and tell it to do backups to that VHD. Once it appears as a > local drive, the standard windows backup will use all its' nice features for > backups. I use this trick at home for a Windows 7 Home Premium backup to my > NAS. > > > > But what I want is something that isn't a kludge. I want a supported > solution that I feel comfortable with as a reliable backup. > > > > We shall see if I get what I want. > > Volatility == rate of change in data over time. You haven't answered > that question. > > How long do you need to keep your data - that is, when someone asks > for a restore, how far back in time should they be able to go? A week, > a month, a year, 5 years? > > How granular do the backups need to be? That is, do staff need to be > able to retrieve from a specific day or specific version going back a > long way, or will a simple child/parent/grandparent rotation work, > with daily incrementals/diffs disappearing after a week (or maybe a > month, especially if data volatility is low)? > > Do you need to keep data offsite for DR purposes? USB Disks transport > as easily as tapes. > > But frankly, with only 1tb of data to preserve, it's looking more and > more to me like a few 1-4tb USB disks and robocopy might be all you > need, along with a spreadsheet and a set of labels to keep track of > it. > > If you need to preserve the VM as well, that's not much more work - a > bit of scripting to down the VM, copy it to a USB disk then fire it up > again could easily fit in with the rest of the job. > > Kurt > > >
