Which Backup System/Software?

[denwei]

Hi all,

 

I was wondering what you guys use as your backup system?

Are people still using tape or just HDD?

Are you still running the software based systems or have you moved over to appliance/cloud solutions?

 

What would you recommend?

We're currently using Microsoft DPM2012, and to be frank... it's a royal pain in the backside!

The great bit is that staff and students can perform self restores (not that they actually do that as they still keep coming to me) and the use of previous versions is very handy as well. But surely there are other "better" products out that which is more reliable than this product.

 

Can you run (on the same server) DPM 2012 for the self restores/previous versions and run something else to do full backups at the same time?

Or is there just a better product out there that can do it all?

 

Thanks

[tmcd35]

We use BarracudaWare's Yosemite Backup (formally Tapeware - as was given away with HP Tape Drives 'back in the day'): BarracudaWare / Yosemite Technologies - to do disk to disk backups to a virtual tape library held on a NAS in a remote building. We do 1 full and 364 daily incremental backups per year.

 

Currently looking at VEEAM (free) to do live VHD backups once a term to our portable NAS that is taken off-site. We currently shut the VM's down to back up over a weekend.

[denwei]

Yeah I've tried the Veeam free edition, it seemed to have worked fine on my test bed but then my test bed died an ugly death.

My only worry is (which I haven't checked on the full edition of Veeam) is what about backing the VM Host server??

[LukeC]

@tmcd35 wow someone else actually uses this software! We are moving to veeam in the next few weeks cant wait!

[tmcd35]

is what about backing the VM Host server??

 

I can't think of a good reason to backup the host server - unless it's running other services, which it really shouldn't. Just do a fresh OS install and (Windows) install the virtualisation role.

[tmcd35]

@tmcd35 wow someone else actually uses this software!

 

For the type of file level backups it does I've not found anything that can do the job better, can't say I'll be moving away from this any time soon.

[denwei]

I can't think of a good reason to backup the host server - unless it's running other services, which it really shouldn't. Just do a fresh OS install and (Windows) install the virtualisation role.

 

But surely if the host server is running 30 plus vms (not that we do) it'll mean the network will be out of action till the base server is back up and running. No??

[tmcd35]

But surely if the host server is running 30 plus vms (not that we do) it'll mean the network will be out of action till the base server is back up and running. No??

 

Redundancy!

 

We have 3 host servers each capable of running 2/3rds of the total load. If one goes down the other two pick up the load. If two goes down we prioritise what runs on the third. If all three go down, we have bigger problems to worry about than the network being out of action.

[denwei]

Redundancy!

 

We have 3 host servers each capable of running 2/3rds of the total load. If one goes down the other two pick up the load. If two goes down we prioritise what runs on the third. If all three go down, we have bigger problems to worry about than the network being out of action.

 

Hahaha! You do make me laugh. Redundancy!! If you came for a site visit you'll see how pants it is here. Servers only gets replaced when it dies. Preventative measures doesn't exist at the moment.

We have 2x low end HP AMD servers fit for running 2-3 VMs as they are using 4x 4TB RAID5 7K Disks, but each server actually has upto 10 VMs each and they are complaining why everything so dog slow....

[zag]

Takes 30mins to build a Hyper-V host, no point in backing them up.

 

We backup to large Samsung 1tb SSD's these days using Veeam.

 

Vroom Vroom!

[LukeC]

For the type of file level backups it does I've not found anything that can do the job better, can't say I'll be moving away from this any time soon.

do you not find it problem matic and the hyper v restore to different hardware an issue?

[vizubeat]

We're using Nakivo here - runs as a VM and backs up all our VMs to NAS boxes dotted around the site.

 

It's basically Veeam, slightly behind their feature set, but miles cheaper. Great success with it so far.

 

A couple of physical servers still back up using BackupAssist, one even uses Robocopy in a batch file. Does the trick.

[tmcd35]

do you not find it problem matic and the hyper v restore to different hardware an issue?

 

Not sure what you are getting at. Yosemite does traditional (virtual) tape based backups at a file level on the file server and doesn't touch the virtualisation at all. Purely user files and gives us great long term daily backups with simple to use and (being disk based) very fast file recovery.

 

As for Hyper-V backups, we do those manually at the moment and are looking at VEEAM to get rid of down time. The only problem we've had when attaching restored VHD's to new Virtual Machines is their network settings being lost, a quick search around the registry gets the correct NIC details and the VM's are back up and running as if nothing had happened.

 

Yosemite has caused us minor issues when we've rebuilt our file server and assigning old backups to restore on the new server but having used the product in one form or another since its Tapeware 7 days (some 8-9 years now, at least) I'm very familiar with how the program works and am used to the interface.

[markwilfan]

Altaro for us. Very impressed from what I've seen

[rich_tech]

We use the paid Veeam Backup and Replication (think its backup essentials the package) here to back our VMs up to two separate NAS boxes on a daily cycle, excellent piece of software for VMs and would recommend it.

[Sylv3r]

We are using Veeam to backup our VM's to a QNAP box.

 

Our last remaining 3 physical servers are backed up using BackupExec - these will be decommissioned and P2V over the summer holidays.

[Wubbalubbadub]

I used to swear by DPM always! However In my current job i had to adopt Backup Exec 2010. I thought it was OK but preferred DPM... However i then upgraded to backup exec 2014 (Now 2015) and haft to say I love it.

 

We have daily backups to disk that also copy to disk. That way we have a daily backup we can fly into on the disks and safe backups for long term.

 

Stored in an offsite safe of course

[kevin_lane]

We use dpm2012 for file and sql stuff but then we have veeam for our vms and well worth every penny

[Sagima]

We use DPM to back up to disk (no tape) the dpm server is backed up by a second dpm server in another part of the site. Backups are kept for 30-60 days depending on that they are

[kevin_lane]

@Sagima how do you find it does it work ok? When you say the DPM server is backup by another DPM server I presume that includes the database for that DPM server plus protection groups etc I've been meaning to look into something like this for our DPM server but not had the chance in terms of protecting the DPM server was it easy enough to do and how big are the backups ?

[ITGURU]

For Data side of things I backup to tape daily - FULL Backup using CA Arcserve.

As for VMs - they're backed up to a SAN every day using Windows Server Backup. A script rotates the backup between 3 folders, today, yesterday, older so got at least 3 days of the backup.

Friday backup is then stored off site until the next week.

[Sagima]

@Sagima how do you find it does it work ok? When you say the DPM server is backup by another DPM server I presume that includes the database for that DPM server plus protection groups etc I've been meaning to look into something like this for our DPM server but not had the chance in terms of protecting the DPM server was it easy enough to do and how big are the backups ?

 

It's as simple as backing up any other server. The back of the backup is about 23TB

[aleach2]

Hi all,

 

I was wondering what you guys use as your backup system?

Are people still using tape or just HDD?

Are you still running the software based systems or have you moved over to appliance/cloud solutions?

 

What would you recommend?

We're currently using Microsoft DPM2012, and to be frank... it's a royal pain in the backside!

The great bit is that staff and students can perform self restores (not that they actually do that as they still keep coming to me) and the use of previous versions is very handy as well. But surely there are other "better" products out that which is more reliable than this product.

 

Can you run (on the same server) DPM 2012 for the self restores/previous versions and run something else to do full backups at the same time?

Or is there just a better product out there that can do it all?

 

Thanks

 

We use Veeam to backup to disk (24TB NAS). We also use Veeam to replicate our VM's to another ESXi host (and NAS storage) across the other end of our site. We then perform weekly backups using the Veeam ZIP feature to encrypted HDDs and then store them offsite. Works really well. We don't use tapes. We looked at a Cloud solution to replace the Veeam ZIP part our our strategy but the cost was just too much for us in the current financial situation.

 

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[robjduk]

There is no discussion to be had, you go and buy Veeam.

 

I use Veeam to onsite server storage and am about to start using Veeam's new cloud connector and start storing them in the cloud

[denwei]

So the general consensus is that TAPE is not longer used. Just using large external HDD's to back them up off site.

 

Veeam seems like the overall winner here.

Does anyone know if Veeam can do the "self restore" or "previous versions" like DPM does? If users right click --> Properties then they can restore back to a previous version themselves.

 

Thanks