I have a set of clients who manage their own location and its needs While using a corporate facility for email, reporting and accounting/banking facilities.
They get PCs from their local store have the corporate IT facility staff install orifice, email and a local desktop view of the corporate systems. Basically a corporate image that is considered to be a full backup of the installed starting environment. Then they get the local facilities installed including the backups I was detailing Backups are done to a set of backup folders and then copied to an external USB. The corporate facility is used for a copy of the user data So they have Corporate data held on the corporate server They have local data backed-up to a folder on their system and then onto local and corporate storage If the corporate system dies there is a reasonable hope of getting their data reloaded If the client system dies there is a reasonable hope of getting the corporate data back from the corporate facility (mapped drives) their local data reloaded from their USB device, or downloaded from the corporate backup of that data And if they empty a file of data and it gets saved as the current version in the corporate or partition/cumulative backup than they can get it from the daily files backup store. And for them with desktop at their local office, and corporate locality, plus a laptop at home they can have their own data synchronised by SPIDEROAK. All really working by file mode Then again I have been learned My XP PC went phut! And killed my OS drive, the Data drive, my phone that I was downloading from, and the external backup drive I was about to use. Luckily I had DVD backups that were less than 6 months old, and DVDs to reinstall the applications (with notes of their specialisation) and SPIDEROAK to download (synchronise the new windows7 PC) the latest stuff from. Email was a real pain new AV signatures stopped fully automated conversion of email to Outlook because windows mail has each email inn a separate file and keeps an index of files the AV deletes malware files and then mail cannot find the file and hangs Thanks MS And remember XCOPY and drag-n-drop does not retain the short names that many apps, and the Windows OSs still use for their files. There is XXCOPYY and/or ROBOCOPY Tee.exe is also useful for directing screen output to a log file while it is also displayed JimB From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Art DeKneef Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 11:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Remote full computer backup to cloud This is a small construction company. So picture no controls, policies, data spread all over between users, no formal backup of any kind except for the accounting PC, everyone a local admin, etc. You should get the picture. Ive made some initial suggestions, backup being one of them, to help with some of the things he wants to change and improve. He knows he needs to do something. Art DeKneef Avanti Computers Mesa, AZ 480-649-4430 Office 480-529-4430 Mobile From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of James Button Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 2:46 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Remote full computer backup to cloud Further thoughts: Is this a corporate environment where much of the data is effectively pooled, or are you considering individual users having almost entirely separate data on individual PCs If corporate, presumably the backups, and any restores will be done at the central corporate site, with downloads of sensitive data being under corporate control by ID, password, encryption and link (web attachment) If not corporate, will the company be paying for the installation and maintenance of the high-speed links to the users homes and anywhere else they may wish to use their systems hotels airports, internet-cafés and other hotspots What considerations have been included to address security where a complete system with corporate and personal access ids and passwords (in the web history and pagefile if nowhere else) may be imaged over other peoples modems and via their servers. What offsets and payment adjustments will be needed to address effects that there may (will) be on tax (re benefits considered by the revenue department to be income enhancing) and associated pension and medical aid. And what guarantee is there that link provided by the ISP will not become unavailable, or that the data store may become inaccessible, or the managing company may cease trading and the drives containing the backups sold (with data on them) to the Chinese, Russians, North Koreans etc. Remember any contracts will be with a non-existing company, and certainly in the UK the liquidator has a duty to make the best recovery from the available assets cleaning drives cost money, and certainly they will get more for systems that they can show are working, than for a collection of drives, server systems and modems etc. Going CLOUD has enormous risks for most organisations, and will probably require more staff to manage the systems to address probable legal requirements. The boss may be criminally, and financially liable for failure to be able to produce stuff to courts, or to show they managed data securely and safely. (UK fancy up to 10 years in jail and £250,000 in fines?) JimB From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Andrew S. Baker Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2014 10:21 PM To: ntsysadm Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Remote full computer backup to cloud The client's desired plan is not going to meet their expectations. They're aiming for a full backup, and will utterly fail to even get a partial one. I cannot add anything extra to what has already been suggested. Perhaps the sheer volume of "don't try this at home" will be helpful in getting him to go in another direction. Regards, ASB <http://xeeme.com/AndrewBaker> http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker Providing Virtual CIO Services (IT Operations & Information Security) for the SMB market On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 3:57 PM, Art DeKneef <[email protected]> wrote: 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 havent worked correctly between the different computers. Im 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
