Server 2012 Offsite (FTP) Backup Software

[Roger H. Veteran]

Looking for some software that can backup a running server (ShadowCopies) to an offsite FTP server with the catch being scheduling and bandwidth throttling options. Gotta do a full backup (was using Azure Backup Preview but it's done now :( so no more freebies!) so that will take a few days. I plan to backup this system to other servers I have which are in the south and west coasts but don't want it sucking up all the bandwidth during the day and "peak" hours.

Anyone got any recommendations - obviously free (and works :p) being the best :)

[xendrome]

I think EaseUS To-Do backup can do this to FTP via scheduling. Might want to check into that. It's not expensive for what it does, but isn't free

[Chris123NT]

I was actually looking for something to do FTP backups as well so I'll be keeping an eye on this thread.

[Roger H. Veteran]

The problem i'm having is that most software can do backup to FTP, the problem is that they don't have a built in limiter to limit the upload during the day to say 256Kbps and say full speed at night. I checked the one you mentioned and it can schedule just fine but don't think they do speed limiters (still checking). If I do full speed all day long it will cause issues with getting work done with browsing/downloading and such.

Guess I could check into the router to see if I can limit some IPs to certain bandwidth but that's probably not that granular as in it's not time aware (Cisco RV082 v3).

[sc302 Veteran]

You are taking the backup approach all wrong. Limited bandwidth requires something that can backup but only backup changes or delta's.

Free backups are probably not going to be able to do this. All backups that support this have to have directly attached storage for deduplication, you can then copy the job to other servers that also have deduplication enabled on them. This saves on bandwidth and time. You can easily get a 30-40:1 with deduplication.

Appliances can do this like the barracuda, unitrends, and symantec can do this as well as backup exec and arcserve that can also do this. None cheap, none free. You can throttle on the appliance level, I have not seen anything on in the backup exec or arcserve, I am not using any of the current softwares. We are actually looking to get away from software based solutions, we want DR in a single package and only one company offers that as of now. We also only want to use internal not cloud or a combination of cloud...one company only offers that as well. In certain environments, we cannot have outside access, we can't even have the networks cross over...they are completely isolated.

[xendrome]

The problem i'm having is that most software can do backup to FTP, the problem is that they don't have a built in limiter to limit the upload during the day to say 256Kbps and say full speed at night. I checked the one you mentioned and it can schedule just fine but don't think they do speed limiters (still checking). If I do full speed all day long it will cause issues with getting work done with browsing/downloading and such.

It does have bandwidth limitations you can set in each job.

Also like you pointed at, you could always using something like.. i know my sonicwall will do AppRules to limit bandwidth, which can be 24/7 or on a schedule.

Another approach is to take daily or weekly system images to a NAS somewhere in the building, and then use something like DropBox to store your shared/mapped folders in and have them sync to an off-site system as well as the cloud. But I don't know how much data we are talking about. DropBox will do delta sync/deduplication with the files I believe.

[episode]

The program for CrashPlan can do this. Don't even need a paid subscription - as long as you're not storing on their servers, the rest of the program functionality is free.

[Prophecy]

We do something similar for File Level backups with SEED+Incremental we use CrashPlan. Works great, we offsite it to a local farm we have in house.

For IMAGE LEVEL we are utilizing ShadowProtect with SEED+Incremental. This allows us to have DR for numerous locations and it works well.