Server Backup Solutions

[Consult_DWI]

Hello, I've lurked on and off Neowin for years now for suggestions, solutions and so on, now I finally have something I actually want to ask...

I am curious of any users personal experience and reviews of professional backup solutions for Windows SERVERS.

I am compiling a list for my company and have been having a hard time finding reviews other than "home users" for many of the major providers. If any of you have used any of the following I'd love to hear your opinion:

StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server

Paragon Drive Backup

Acronis True Image Server

Farstone Total Backup Advanced Server

Thanks in advance, Like I said I'm just looking for some peer reviews, and their own experiences.

[f4af_billy]

  On 05/04/2010 at 14:57, Consult_DWI said:

Hello, I've lurked on and off Neowin for years now for suggestions, solutions and so on, now I finally have something I actually want to ask...

I am curious of any users personal experience and reviews of professional backup solutions for Windows SERVERS.

I am compiling a list for my company and have been having a hard time finding reviews other than "home users" for many of the major providers. If any of you have used any of the following I'd love to hear your opinion:

StorageCraft ShadowProtect Server

Paragon Drive Backup

Acronis True Image Server

Farstone Total Backup Advanced Server

Thanks in advance, Like I said I'm just looking for some peer reviews, and their own experiences.

at the moment we use symantec backup exec to do exchange\sql\data and image servers on a rotational schedule with syamntec livestate recovery... its called something else now (the name escapes me!)

we are upgrading to commvault in the coming months but.... its slightly expensive!

I know it seems time consuming and boring but you can get fully functional trial versions of 99% of the server backup solutions available... id do some tests and see what fits in with your budget\infrastructure best. at the end of the day, if it backs up what you want, and restores it in the way you want (im thinking exchange here... some can restore down to a users specific email, others do a full mailbox).

as for your original question. backupexec is really easy to use, and does the job fine. were only upgrading to commvault to do fancy things with disk>tape and de-duplication to reduce backup times.

[sc302 Veteran]

What is it that you are trying to do?

I have experiance with both paragon and acronis, as well as backup exec, arc serve, yosimite, and a few others. With a little more background as to what you are trying to accomplish, I can advise you of the right direction to take. For instance, are trying to make a full dr solution, are you trying to do simple backups? Are you planning on backup to disk, then backup to tape to be able to offisite the physical backups? Or do you want to use a online solution so you don't have to physically off site tapes and/or drives incase of absolute disaster (bomb going off in building, plane crashing into building, bus running into building, something explodes in the server room, etc).

backu exec 2010 offers dedup technology, but it is a pig on resources.

[Consult_DWI]

We are looking at implementing a backup solution from scratch. We have a 2003 server environment, with one 2008 server. We have a few of them running virtually, but the rest are physical boxes. We would like a backup solution where we could restore to a virtual machine to get us up and running (would probably only take an hour or so), then take the time to re-build the down machine however needed. Basically a disaster recovery, but for ease of mind they'd like data backup as well.

Yes to the Exchange question, supervisors would like mailbox restore, but don't think we need to go to individual email level.

Some of the options toyed around are: take VM snapshots regularly, and plain old system state every night; a full paid solution like Acronis; and a few things in between. The data will be stored on NAS, with ftp to external possible, but not set in stone.

We are a small company, 12 servers total. The last company I worked for was even smaller, and we just used Windows built in backup.

I just wanted to know if A: there were other quality products than I mentioned, and B: if those products were reliable, simple to use and configure, and had decent support.

Ps. Solutions like CommVault are above our price range, heck even some of those I mentioned are stretching it but we will pay for if the other solutions can't provide what we want.

Thanks again fellas.

[sc302 Veteran]

I would look into backup exec 2010. It would do everything that you want. The rest of them will not.

[Consult_DWI]

  On 05/04/2010 at 17:16, sc302 said:

...The rest of them will not.

Curious why you'd say that. Storagecraft, Acronis, and Paragon all state they can do P2V with their server versions, and location of the backup is a simple NAS which almost every product made does, and ftp isn't that different.

I'll look at Backup Exec, but you did state a little bit ago it was a pig on resources.

[sc302 Veteran]

  On 05/04/2010 at 17:32, Consult_DWI said:

Curious why you'd say that. Storagecraft, Acronis, and Paragon all state they can do P2V with their server versions, and location of the backup is a simple NAS which almost every product made does, and ftp isn't that different.

I'll look at Backup Exec, but you did state a little bit ago it was a pig on resources.

they can...however, backup exec can backup a vmdk, backup exec can backup an exchange server and restore an exchange server (go ahead and try to restore your mail server to retrieve a mailbox, you will have to restore the whole server with acronis to a vmware box and then extract the data using a exmerge process, a bit time consuming don't you think?). If you were just backing up data or making images of servers to possibly restore ot a vmware box if the system fails then your other solutions would work fine. However you have a email database that backup exec excels at, which presses my recommendation to backup exec vs the others. pig on resources or not, backup exec is your best solution for ease of recovery.

Acronis is very light and can convert to a vmdk file, or if you have Vsphere the p2v utility can take the most popular image files and convert them to a vmdk file. This is from the vmware p2v utility:

Backup image or third-party virtual machine

Converts a backup image or a third-party virtual machine.

Supported backup images or third-party virtual machines are:

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 or 2007

Microsoft VirtualServer 2005

Parallels Desktop 2.5, 3.0 or 4.0 for Mac

VMware Consolidated Backup (Windows Converter Standalone server only)

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 6.5, 7.0, 8.0 (Windows Converter Standalone server only)

Symantec LiveState Recovery 3/6 (Windows Converter Standalone server only)

Norton Ghost versions from 9 to 14 (Windows Converter Standalone server only)

Acronis True Image Backup (Windows Converter Standalone server only)

ShadowProtect Desktop, Server, SBS, IT, etc versions from 2.0 to 3.2 (Windows Converter Standalone server only)

As you can see the vmware utility can convert just about any of them.

Acronis is a bit slow to convert to a vmdk file, about as slow as it is to create the image. So it may be fast or it may be slow depending on the size server it is restoring.

[Consult_DWI]

Hmm, thanks for the info, will need to look more into that part of it.

It'd be nice to have a test environment to try the demos on, but as I said, we are a small company and don't have the funds to set up a whole test lab. Whatever we decide on will be implemented in a mostly "live" environment.

[Baigley]

I know that these are not on your list, but personal experience may help. We used to use Symantec BackupExec, but we now use Systems Center Data Protection Manager (DPM). We are pretty much using all Systems Center products right now, and I am happy with DPM as well. I have 3 rather large SAN's that replicate each other and I use DPM to manage all my tapes and backups to the SAN's.

[Consult_DWI]

I didn't know about DPM, thanks. I'll look into that as well.

[JMann Veteran]

I am also in agreement for Symantec Backup Exec, works brilliantly for either everyday backups or even full DR solutions. Just one thing that may be worth noting, if you are using VM's with Hyper V don't rely on snapshots as a backup method - If it comes to restoring a VM with snapshots it's a real hassle to get them to merge to one working VHD for restore without it producing BSODs! Not something that is very helpful when wanting to restore virtual machines quickly, which of course is one of the main advantages of going Virtual.

[Consult_DWI]

It's a shame so many are recommending Backup Exec... my supervisors have eliminated it because of the insane high cost. From their website for the Server version, and adding the restore option we are talking almost $2000 for 1 server. We only have 5 servers we are willing to spend money on backing up out of a 9 server environment (4 virtual).

$10,000 is most of our IT budget for the year.

I've been leaning towards StorageCraft, or Paragon personally, but as I said originally I don't have the real-world experience with these so I could be mislead.

[1337ish]

+1 for MS DPM, it rocks and 2010 is coming out next month approx too.

[sc302 Veteran]

Yes but it is not 2000 for each additional server. exchange is 900, 200 for each File Server, 900 for SQL, and 900 for backup exec itself. So yes 1800 for exchange and backup exec, 200 for each file server (which is much cheaper then buying 500 each server and not have the ability to restore exchange mail boxes, if that were the case then dont buy the 900 exchange piece and go with the 200 additional server option, same with sql). You could drop the support and it would save you a few $$, these prices are off cdw and have essential support on them.

[Consult_DWI]

Those prices from CDW are for renewals, not new licenses.

From Symantec Base price for Server:

Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition

Includes Essential 12 Months Support

Was: $1,279.51 per license (price for previous version 12.5)

Now: $928.96 per license

Configuring our DC for bare metal restore:

Symantec Backup Exec 2010 Server License + Essential 12 Months Support

SKU: 20056161 $1,162.66

Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition License + Essential 12 Months Support

SKU: 20058966 $928.96

Symantec Backup Exec 2010 Agent for Active Directory License + Essential 12 Months Support

SKU: 20056539 $1,162.66

total: $3,254.28

Now I can price out form re-sellers, but that's just insane.

[sc302 Veteran]

Upgrade $629 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1977644

full $871 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1977465

Windows server agent (i was wrong here) $433 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1592351

Exchange Agent $879 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1977520

SQL Agent $879 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1977578

System Recovery $739 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1918774

Active Directory $879 http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=1977488

Symantec is ripping you a new one if you ask me.

2489 with your config, that is $765 that symantec is killin you on. (cdw is usually high priced)

Sure you can do an acronis solution for 1100 (if I am not mistaken for their enterprise server) per server. Works great btw. It isn't as optioned or granular as BE but it does do the job. I have both here actually, BE and Acronis. We have a great investment in BE, and BE gives me much better restore capabilities with SQL and Exchange that Acronis can't touch. Acronis I mainly use for PC's and I do have their high end Enterprise server product.

[rich123]

Wow, these solutions are very expensive? What about some cheaper one? Like Handy Backup Server. It can backup not only files and folders, but MSSQL databases too. Not expensive and good enterprise backup software, I think.