James, you make some good points.
1. The initial idea would be to seed the backup device and then drive it to the remote office located 2 hours away. Then after setup the incremental backup should take over. I know restoring the data will take time if all of it is restored at one time. But breaking it down to individual servers or current data would help the restore process. 2. Cloud storage right now is being considered because everyone seems to be talking about it. He mentioned cloud as an additional option. Currently thinking Microsoft's Azure. 3. I don't think they have a DR process in place. But I think it is something they are considering because of this request. They may be thinking that with some of the servers being VMs they can be restored quickly. But like you said, can they get to the equipment to restore them? 4. The current setup is unknown. If they agree to an assessment and inventory, I will have a good understanding of what is there. They will also. Since it didn't sound like they have something like that in place now. He mentioned how much trouble it was looking for accounts and passwords to change when the last IT guy just quit. And he's not sure he got all of them. 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: Monday, January 12, 2015 4:08 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Backing up between main office and remote site Not having done such corporate backups for a long while I am not going to suggest facilities, but pose some things to consider: 17TB is a high volume to run overnight backups on - so can you get away with just incrementals With a consolidation of the incremental saves as an after that - daily task. USB3 - SATA3? Drive speeds mean it will take ???days to just reload that 17TB using locally attached media Will cloud backup allow a reasonably fast restore /recovery of the operational environment Is that cloud backup secure and safe - as in who owns the facility, the datastore hardware and the links to that service provider's systems and then their datastore When (OK if) the datastore owner goes bust what happens to the drives containing your data, and to your data itself If using physical transport of backup media - avoid having the same transport vehicle do both the return of the old copies and the transport of the new - tends to lead to a shortcut where both copies are in the same location at the same time - as in your main location's car park. And . what is the disaster recovery process ? Consider if there is a fire in the main server farm area and the building (partially) collapses 1 site I worked at found that the backup documentation, current backup storage devices and master passwords, recovery plan and authorisation codes - contacts etc. were in a safe in the middle of the building. That was noted by 'Management' when I finally managed to persuade them to do a proper disaster recovery exercise - On one long-holiday weekend, senior IT management stopped all IT staff from accessing the building with the statement - this building is not to accessed - now go and get the IT working again! The panic starts with - can you contact the appropriate people at the standby site - when you don't have their contact details! A 2 hour firesafe is not much good if there is heated concrete around it for a day, and then it takes several more days to get enough of that debris - concrete etc. moved to be able to extract the safes. (It was also discovered that the Halon suppressant system had not been filled) So I'd start with some requirements assessments - as in what is essential for the corporate front to the outer world Then some minimum time calculations. Also - having recreated your systems what processing will be needed to achieve a new backup set from which your processes will be compatible with the restore process again As in will you need a full backup of the 17TB before you can go to just incremental saves again? Also - what is the exposure while having the Current (only?) backup set in the same location as the server farm being rebuilt. - and maybe even attached to the same hardware driven from the same power supply I recently lost a system, OS drive, data drive & the drive the data was being backed-up to, - the PSU gave up! Then we found that the prior backup was not readable - probably due to problems with that PSU that had not become bad enough to be noticeable when that backup was being taken . Yes it was noticed when it smoked and the system stopped! JimB From: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Art DeKneef Sent: Monday, January 12, 2015 7:53 PM To: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Subject: [NTSysADM] Backing up between main office and remote site I am asking for feedback from those that backup between multiple sites. What were the good things and what would you do different? First time I've had to look at this in a very long time. Talked with a potential new client looking to backup up between the two offices and possibly cloud backup. Current data size is estimated at 17 TBs. A disaster recovery type of thing. Besides have the backup local another copy is off-site. Main office has several Windows Server 2008 physical servers along with 15-20 virtual servers. They are running VM Ware (unknown version). Included in the mix is an Exchange Server (probably 2010), couple SQL Servers (unknown version), file and print and AD. The remote office has a few servers. Each site is on a fiber network but speed is unknown at this time. He is checking. Their previous IT guy just quit so they asked for a proposal to go in and document the network and implementing a remote backup solution. Right now we're focusing on this backup solution but I'm sure it will change as we get further into our discussions. I could use a couple of enterprise NAS devices or put in a couple of Server 2012 R2 servers as a storage and possibly turn on de-dup to reduce data transfer size. Thanks for the help. Art DeKneef Avanti Computers Mesa, AZ 480-649-4430 Office 480-529-4430 Mobile
