Re: NAS or USB Backup?

Speed is pretty hard to gauge, but I'm backing up about 70 GB over gigabit
ethernet in 2 hours 50 minutes. Backing that same data up to an Exabyte
SCSI tape drive takes 3.5 hours for the backup and 3.5 for verify, so that's
7 hours.

Aside from the time saving for full backups, I also do incremental backups
every three hours during the day - 4 backups per day. Those incrementals
take only a few minutes - less than 5 - and don't have any noticeable impact
on server performance. I'm using ShadowProtect Desktop to back up one
user's desktop PC, and she's not even aware that the incremental backups are
being done. It's all VSS, so the impact on performance is quite low.

What you do to restore individual files is to "mount" the ShadowProtect
backup - any full or incremental backup you choose. That gives it a drive
letter in Windows Explorer and you can browse the backup just like you would
the regular file system.

Last week, I had someone accidentally overwrite a whole directory tree worth
of data with a much older (and therefore useless) copy. It took me just a
few minutes to mount the most recent ShadowProtect backup and drag-and-drop
the top-level directory out to overwrite the damaged data.

This is all I know about backup in the next version of SBS, but this pretty
well sums it up: http://sbs.seandaniel.com/2007_05_01_archive.html

I'm not a marketing person for StorageCraft. I met them at SMBNation, and
they convinced me to try ShadowProtect Server at a time when my tape backup
was taking noticeably longer than the backup window. I had a server where
the part-time secretary often could not work if she came in early in the
morning, as the backup had not completed. I had a test server available,
and I tried everything including bare metal restore. I just became
convinced that this was a superior product. I now use it on two member
servers, although not yet on my SBS. The fact that I'm not using it on the
SBS is a financial thing rather than my actual preference.

On the subject of 2 tier, here's what I do on my document management server,
the 70 GB one. ShadowProtect does a full backup at 5 PM on Sunday. It does
incrementals 7 days per week at 11 AM, 2, 5, and 8 PM. All of these go over
gigabit to a Windows Storage Server. Then, nightly at 8:30 PM, the Storage
Server backs up to tape. Tape is for offsite only, and the Storage Server
is my first source if files have to be restored. There is no production
data on the Storage Server (it gets backups from two servers and a desktop),
so I don't care how long the tape backup takes or when it runs.

ShadowProtect keeps three full backups and the associated incrementals (this
is configurable). After the 4th full backup completes, it automatically
deletes the first full and associated incrementals. I can restore from any
of these if necessary, so if a file is deleted by mistake and not noticed
for a couple of days, I just get it from an older backup.


"Dave W" <mtdave@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1d73c5cf-96cd-4ade-b339-aa183312b8db@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Dec 5, 5:13 pm, "Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]"
<gwdib...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
ShadowProtect can be configured to send an e-mail as soon as the job
completes or fails. For success, it tells start and end time, source and
destination. For failure, it sends the log. It won't do tape - it only
backs up to a drive, but it can use any drive you can map from the
server.
I just have an Outlook rule that moves the success messages to their own
folder, and I just tested the failure message by accidentally letting a
drive fill up.

At first glance, you might think SP is a little pricey. However, in
addition to the awesome job it does with backup, it also has hardware
independent restore. That means that it'll restore to just about any
hardware, even virtual, with the built-in drivers. If it doesn't have
the
drivers for your hardware, you can add them during the restore. I've
never
had to do a bare metal restore to different hardware, but I've seen it
demonstrated and it's really awesome (not to mention simple). I have
tested
bare metal restore to the same hardware, and that worked flawlessly,
including restore of SQL databases that were backed up on line, and came
right back up after the restore as if nothing had happened.

If you're considering SP, please consider downloading the trial from
their
web site. It's full-featured for I think 30 days, and it'll uninstall
cleanly in the unlikely event you decide against it. There's an
SBS-specific version with attractive pricing. On SBS, you need to enable
the Exchange VSS writer if you switch away from the built-in backup -
there's a KB for that. Post back if you can't find it.

"Dave W" <mtd...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:4e1f5c87-4f4c-45a0-94cf-f34e27cd1561@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



On Dec 4, 3:17 am, "Brian Cryer" <bri...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
"Dave W" <mtd...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:ae27b3e6-34de-4b1a-9f8b-8fe13f5c0c35@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<snip>

OK, so in theory, a USB 2.0 drive at 480Mbps will run slower than a
gigabit connection runing at 1000Mbps assuming the NIC and the drive
is the same right?

USB typically run slower than this, but the point is that its the
drive
(single, mirrored, raided - whatever the configuration) that is the
bottleneck not the interface (USB or network).

Right now, we are backing up 175GB of data (full backup) to a
gigabit
connected Western Digital hard drive -- and it takes 18+ hours.
Does
this seem reasonable?

Ouch, yes and no.

In a non-SBS environment I backup about 400GB of data each night to a
single
external usb disk. This disk holds the backups from three different
servers.
Unfortunatly I've no idea how long it takes, but one server (the main
office
server) backs up about 340GB of data, the backup kicks of at 1pm and
is
always finished before I come into the office at 9am.

The difference in timings is probably due to "how" I do the backup.
The
server has three drives:
C: 41GB used
E: 67GB used
F: 236GB used
I use ntbackup to backup the C drive. That plus a script to backup the
sql-server databases (also on C: - I know they shouldn't be but ...)
probably takes the bulk of the time. The backup of the E: and F:
drives
is
very quick. The reason is that I don't use ntbackup for those but a
straight
file copy. Actually its not a straight copy, we use an in-house
file-copy
utility similar to xcopy but which also removes files that no longer
exist.
The net effect is that the very first time a backup is run it does
take
an
age but each time the backup is run to overwrite an older-backup it
only
needs to copy those files which are new or which have changed (most
files
thus don't need copying). The end result is that it is very fast and I
end
up with a complete image of the drives plus an nt backup of the system
disk.

I don't have figures to hand, but for an SBS setup I use the same
approach
and backing up about 100GB of data (ish) comfortably finishes over
night.

So perhaps consider how you do your backup. For example would
differential
backups help?
--
Brian Cryerwww.cryer.co.uk/brian

Yeah, I've thought about going with the differential but I REALLY like
the reports I get from the SBS backup utility. However, those reports
are a day behind but I still get an immediate warning email if it
fails.

Does anyone know if ShadowProtect sends an email upon completion?

We use Backup Exec 11d to a 400/800 internal tape drive and it
finishes within a reasonable time frame. The NAS drive is just a
secondary backup that makes it easier in case the whole server goes
down. Being able to restore quickbooks from it is a nice layer of
flexibility.

I appreciate the thoughts around this.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Great info! Thank you. If you were to guess, how much faster is it
than the normal SBS backup? I'm looking at 18 hours right now. If
the server goes down and we have used SP to backup to an external USB/
NAS drive, can we install the software on a client and recover
individual files (such as a quickbooks data file) in order for the
business to keep running while we fix the server? That's the end
game.

I don't think there is a beta SBS 2008 out there yet but if there is,
is the backup faster than NTBACKUP?

I'm hoping the responses are real world and not just marketing folks
from SP just pitching the product. Even if they are -- and the
product works the way I've read about -- then I'm a believer and will
pitch it on top of Symantec Backup Exec.

I'm a believer in a 2 tier backup. It's probably overkill but it
helps me protect me and my customers in the end.


Thanks for all the great info guys.
-dw


.

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