Pain #1 Scheduling backup to happen at appropriate intervals,
but not when the user powers up the notebook to use it, and not when they do not have access to a fast link, and not when they do not have access to the designated cloud store Maybe logically split the hard drive into an OS partition, a data partition and a backup partition At installation/setup/supply-to-users time do backups locally of the OS and data partitions. At frequent intervals - startup so that other applications do not have files open Do incremental backups to the backup partition Do file level backup of the user data - maybe to a folder with a current timestamp, and to a cumulative (to-date) area After the incremental backups copy those files to the cloud After the data backups zip the folders , and copy those files to the cloud (zip avoids file name problems with optical media etc.) User can now Recover old versions of files they corrupted Recover their files to a new PC Recreate their system on a new drive (well - you'd be doing that for them!) Complex but avoids long periods of user waiting high comms link usage and high volumes of data on the cloud. Expect a Full backup to take will be at least 1 hour for each 100GB. And .. you can encrypt the stuff going to the cloud - zip the incremental backups too! Or maybe use something like SPIDEROAK that encrypts on the PC before uploading, keeps multiple backups that can be downloaded without overwriting current versions and synchronise other PC's - so you can download to a new PC with an updated OS or hardware JimB From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Art DeKneef Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 8:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [NTSysADM] Remote full computer backup to cloud Have a new client that wants to backup 15 computers, possibly to the cloud. The cloud seems to be his preference right now. 7 computers are in an office with the other 8 being laptops that rarely come into the office. There is no server (Yeah I know), mix of Windows 7 Home and Pro, Windows 8 and Pro, varying skill levels. They buy whatever fits their fancy and price when something breaks. Hopefully I can get them to see the value of consistency of hardware. He wants to backup the whole computer, not just the business stuff. I mentioned a small server or NAS device for the office but that still leaves the laptops. They use a couple of 1TB USB drives in the office now but there have been a few instances where they haven't worked correctly between the different computers. I'm currently looking at Carbonite, Mozy, Crashplan and Copy but they all seem to just want to backup files and folders, not the whole drive based on my first glance. Anyone have any experience backing up remote computers they would like to share while I research some more? Thanks Art DeKneef Avanti Computers Mesa, AZ 480-649-4430 Office 480-529-4430 Mobile
