Re: NAS or USB Backup?

I'm not sure this matters but I ran into it when I built my Vista box and
once since. Seagate SATA drives come with a jumper configured to limit the
drive to SATA 1 speed. If you don't remove the jumper, you don't get SATA
2. I only got onto this because of the diagnostic software that came with
the motherboard. And, it might be a Seagate-only thing.

If I wasn't so cheap, I'd buy boxed drives instead of OEM, and I'd learn
stuff like this from the instructions, instead of having to remove the
drive, then the jumper, then reinstall the drive.


"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OVHaO4FOIHA.2208@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Golf has been called off, the others hit off without me
(GRRRRRRRSASSAFRASSIN GRRRRRRR)

I think I need to tell my client to replace some drives purchased only a
few months ago. I'm pretty sure (without checking) that 'sustained
throughput' of the existing set was ~54MBps whereas the current crop are
_claiming_ closer to 80MBps or better.

as usual, I'm annoyed about 'obfuscation'. I'm looking up the specs on two
similar drives from the same manufacturer

the 7200 says
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 972 Mbits/s (Max)

while the 10K says
Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 84 MB/s (Sustained)

Why can they not quote exactly the same parameter for both drives?

"Dave Nickason [SBS MVP]" <gwdibble@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
message news:u%23Z6TcFOIHA.4584@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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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