Dropped into a Messy situation with backups

[Zoatibix]

I've come into a situation where I need to backup about two dozen physical servers and as many Hyper-V hosts.

 

It looks as if several of these servers have been running for years: there are a couple of 2003, some 2008 R2, but mainly 2012. There also appear to be some Linux boxes floating out there doing...stuff :0/ (On the plus side a colleague has been working through the Linux backups.)

 

I have found two backup servers running MS Data protection Management bit of SCCM. After a lot of faffing with HP engineers I now have a working tape library but I'm not sure there is enough HDD space on the backup servers to take the initial snapshots that DPM wants. We had about 15TB to play with but DPM seems have allocated most of that already (annoyingly without using much of it).

 

At the moment I don't seem to have a good backup of most of this. DPM wants to restart the servers (one of which died this morning from a blown cap) so I am hesitant to start rebooting stuff. I've manually installed DPM to a couple of servers in the hope that I wouldn't need to restart them to activate the client but it is still asking for a restart. I have some spare file servers /NAS box that I can copy data to.

 

1. Does anybody know a way of starting DPM's service to get back ups running?

2. Can somebody suggest a way of taking a backup of the servers? I've started looking at Volume Shadow Copy but if I understand correctly that will only track changes since I first switch it on. So I dont' think that it is viable.

3. Any other general advice?

 

 

Thank you in advance.

[lafleur1977]

I can't comment on Dpm as haven't used it. The number of servers you have seems quite overwhelming and I thought we had a lot at 18! First I would look at what you have on each server and how often you need to back them up. Secondly how far do you want to retain backups for. Finally what might you need to change or put into place to meet those needs. Start to prioritise and draw up a backup plan.

 

My backup solution at the moment uses backup exec to backup files and server system state backups for some servers. We do differential backups daily (mon to fri) to disc. Retention is controlled by backup exec and is set to 4 weeks before they can be overwritten. We also duplicate each Friday differential backup to tape. We do a monthly full backup, again retention controlled by backup exec and set to 4 weeks. Monthly backups are always duplicate to tape and we store these in a fire proof safe for 6 months. Essentially we are able to restore data up to 6 months ago. The solution works pretty well but but I have some issues as I am running out of disc storage now due to data growth. I have 5 Tb of backup disc storage. My full backups are getting on for 3 tb and diffs are usually between 150gb and 200gb.

 

I also perform as hoc windows server backups on most of my servers (anything 2008 + can do these) and these allow for an image backup of each server which I store on a nas.

 

Finally VSS is a good option to use, particularly on your file server, as an option to complement your main backup solution. It's not a true backup, as it stores copies of files on the local volume. We use them for quick file restoration and have these configured for 7am, 11am and 1.30pm.

 

Hope that helps.

[harriuk]

Hi, DPM is a VSS backup solution that is exactly what it does. On a windows server it kicks off windows server backup and stores it on a dedicated partition on the DPM server using VSS. It starts by taking a full copy then synching changes at regular set intervals. Have a good look at what DPM is actually already backing up in the protection groups. DPM allocates enough space for the initial backup and then enough space dependant on how many days you want to keep. It will also integrate with a tape backup for longer term backup solutions.

[Zoatibix]

Thanks for the replies, guys.

 

I've realized since my initial post the DPM relies on VSS anyway.

 

I've been told I need to retain data for up to a year (!??!)

 

I'm working my way through what must be backed up compared to what should be plus finding that I have a lot of space shoved from pillar to post as a 'backup solution'.

Edited April 7, 2015 by Zoatibix