6 replies to this topic

[Prophecy]

Scenario, lets say you want to back up remote servers to a data center or a central location.

You want to utilize some sort of daily backup for the server, possibly an image that works with incremental backups
Also database support, you want to back up databases.

Here is the kicker, this is what makes this difficult. You want to back up the changes each night, and the software on the recieving end should take the incremental changes and add them to the image file.


Just curious some of your best practices, I know there are alot of paid software solutions out there, however I am curious if anyone has completed these tasks with windows NT backup and a ftp type software.

[+sc302]

It sounds like you want something that does deduplication. That will maximize the use out of your avail bandwidth and do what you want. I only know of paid software that does this and some even have it as a separate purchasable option. It is a newer technology that compares and backs up on the bit level, backing up only the bits that change vs the entire file. Most pay solutions have this option. I don't know what your budget looks like, but look at unitrends, barracuda backup appliance, backup exec (might as well purchase one of the other solutions), arc serve, and acronis.

[Prophecy]

Thanks SC302..
I am trying not to purchase multiple licenses for my remote locations, I am also looking at the built in feature that Labtech offers in its backup solution. Many of these locations are seperate domains and I am trying to avoid VPN connections to each location as well. I think this is obtainable via Symantec Backup exec however I am not sure. I am just wondering how many MSPs offer back up solutions to their numerous clients.

[+sc302]

we use a barracuda backup appliance that we sell to our clients. it costs them around 100 a month for backup, we purchase the appliance and it sits at their site. With our discount, In around 10 months the appliance pays for itself, after that it is paying us. This is for the little backup 190 unit, anything bigger they need to fork up the cash. It is web based so we can monitor it for the clients very easily, we can also restore very easily from anywhere in the world. Most are willing to do this, no tapes to swap out, and it gets duplicated to 2 barracuda datacenters. And it does dedup.

here is what the web interface looks like

everything under main is a backup server for a client

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[Prophecy]

This appliance is stored on the client site, do you have a "master" device at your site to manage all of them? Say you have 30 locations you really dont want to have to login to 30 devices, a centralized control panel would be ideal that shows you daily backup status of each location correct?

Would this device back up to my specified data center and not necessarily to the cloud?

[+sc302]

Each device sits at the client site, every one of those devices you see there is at each client site. You can see by the interface that I can get a health status at a quick glance. Anything with a red square is an issue, anything with a yellow triangle should be looked at and anything with green circle is good to go. I logon once to the main console there, if I see problems I have to treat them individually as you would any other backup scenerio.

You could either use the barracuda cloud or if you have a large backup appliance at your datacenter, it can be replicated there. The benefit to the cloud is if the appliance dies, barracuda sends you a unit with all of your backup data on it to be able to restore provided you purchased the instant replacement option. But the option is there to use another appliance vs the cloud.

[+sc302]

In this scenerio, you buy one appliance for each site, that is what it is for the entire site. Doesn't matter if they have a hundred pc's 10 mail servers, 20 sql servers, 100 AD servers, 10,000 file print servers. It gets licensed by size, not by what you are backing up. Another solution to look at is unitrends, it is very similar and can take a full backup and make it a vmware guest on the appliance itself. This can make disaster recovery almost instantaneous and put the client in a very quick uptime scenerio. Just another option to look at. Barracuda does offer baremetal if you backup the entire servers, but you need to size the backup units accordingly in either case. Both recommend 2x the size of what you have now in used drive space. If you purchase instant replacement with barracuda you are now entitled to a hardware refresh every 4 years (bigger backup size and faster equipment)