Re: NAS or USB Backup?

If you're actually putting pen to paper, I checked and the full backup is
65.5 GB, and it took 2 hours and 50 minutes. That one is SP3 - not sure if
the compression is better than version 2 or not.


"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23qzdoUFOIHA.4948@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
OK, you're getting better writes than I. I'm still a little surprised, I'd
expect to need more drives than that to get the write rate.

must do sums, after golf, which I'm already late for.

"Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" <gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:ec83FPFOIHA.5472@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It's a Dell PE830 with a hardware controller and 4 250 GB SATA drives,
RAID 5. Runs 64-bit Windows Storage Server R2. I'm currently backing up
2 of the 3 production servers to that. No user shares or production data
on there, so the performance is adequate.


"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uKwqRkEOIHA.3556@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dave, what device are those 'over Gb' backups going to?

I'm writing similar to a DNES running RAID1 SATA and realised I was
hitting write performance for the drives, takes much longer.

"Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" <gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:uTyd7rDOIHA.5160@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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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