MYK-IT Posted October 20, 2015 Posted October 20, 2015 Hi, Currently using a combination of DPM 2012 R2 (Windows 2008 R2 Storage Server) for short-term backups and to (ageing) Dell LTO4 TL2000 Tape Library for long-term backups (D2D2T); and I need to review/upgrade this solution; both due to warranty implications and additional storage is required (more so for DPM2012 R2 on a Dell NX31000 appliance). A potential (D2D2D) solution being contemplated is to procure 2x DELL DR4100 appliances; each one would replace the current roles of NX3100 (short-term) and the TL2000 (long-term); and we would then build a VM based DPM2012 R2 on Server 2012 R2 platform (so that DeDuplication can also be utilised for greater data storage efficiency) and this would the free up the NX3100 to be reconfigured as additional NAS data/storage space in general. The 2nd DR4100 (long-term) could then be relocated elsewhere in relation to DR. An alternative thought would be to utilise Microsoft Azure (as that works with DPM2012 R2) for long-term backups; and continue to use our NX3100 as the DPM2012 R2 Server; or indeed build a VM based DPM2012 R2 Server and utilise the same disk pool on the NX3100. Ideally, I would like to review (and cost) every option, as like most schools at the moment, our budget has been significantly reduced this year so all the more pressure to ensure that all solutions are covered; along with their potential costs. I am interested in (feedback/advice from) anyone else who has started to use Microsoft Azure/Cloud Based services for their full (off-site / long-term) school backups? and what things we should ensure that it adheres too? (guidelines, policies etc.) as I am thinking that it would be one less bit of physical kit to manage/look after combined with not having to worry about upgrading/replacing the equipment every 3-5 years or so. I've found some Microsoft websites that give some indicative costs; combined with using a PS Script that 'claims' to calculate space required for 30 days of data based on current Protection Groups within DPM2012 R2 but it is still a bit unclear to be honest; especially in how we ensure/calculate that there's enough space for monthly/yearly long-term data retention. Maybe we have to work with a Microsoft OVS-ES reseller? to ensure we get discounted education pricing? Thank you. NB. Currently use RedStor for SIMS backups only; in keeping with our LEA's SIMS Support Team guidance.
dhicks Posted October 20, 2015 Posted October 20, 2015 I am interested in (feedback/advice from) anyone else who has started to use Microsoft Azure/Cloud Based services for their full (off-site / long-term) school backups? Here's another thread where we had a similar discussion: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/150488-azure-ad-other-services.html That was from March this year, and since then prices might have gone down a bit - BackBlaze suddenly dropped the price of their storage last month, so hopefully Google / Amazon / Microsoft will be following shortly. The rough pricings I worked out in March were around £300 - £500 per month for offsite mirrored VM images using either Microsoft's or Amazon's systems. That's still at least around £4,000-ish per year, which the bursar still thought was a bit expensive, so I priced a solution up where we run 2 or 3 VMs on Google's infrastructure and copy our data over - not mirroring VMs, just backup to a cloud-based target VM of some sort. That worked out a bit cheaper, although I don't have the figures to hand. 1
MYK-IT Posted October 21, 2015 Author Posted October 21, 2015 Thanks @dhicks I did try searching initially, but failed to find that particular discussion/thread! Running VM on Azure is probably one step beyond from what I am investigating/trying to achieve at the moment. Ultimately I think we just need "data blobs?" of storage so that our DPM 2012 R2 Server can see it (as available storage) so that I can configured Long-Term protection there. From that discussion/thread; I get the impression that it is (still?) very hit and miss trying to get MS to advise of correct pricing/service levels? or have you (or anyone else) been more successful? Even if going via a reseller etc? Many Thanks,
MYK-IT Posted February 25, 2016 Author Posted February 25, 2016 So, trying to bring our backup solution up to the 21st Century with D2D2D... but despite many updates to Microsoft's DPM it still only supports Tape for Long Term Protection (max 99 years). Or Azure, at a push at 448 days! That's no good when data retention periods for financing, accounting, auditing etc are many, many years beyond that! C'mon Microsoft, sort it out! #DarkAges Looking like an alternative, more expensive backup solution required! or perhaps FileStreamer but that is not cheap either! rant over... back to work...
Steve21 Posted February 25, 2016 Posted February 25, 2016 That's no good when data retention periods for financing, accounting, auditing etc are many, many years beyond that! Surely though you're not deleting items per day? As in take financial audit if you have a 5 year old file on a server that's backed up today it's still stored with 5 years data etc. Or did you want day by day changes incase? Steve
CyberNerd Posted February 25, 2016 Posted February 25, 2016 Qnap has a backup to Google drive option. If you backup to a qnap nas then just add the account details and sync it all. It's unlimited storage on GAFE and it's FREE
Matt_Renato Posted February 25, 2016 Posted February 25, 2016 Don't forget to check the geographical location of any cloud backup solution to make sure that you don't fall foul of the Data Protection Act.
steve_forbes Posted February 25, 2016 Posted February 25, 2016 We at RM are currently look at developing a Cloud backup solution, utilising Azure storage but making the pricing structure clearer for schools and removing some of the potential barriers that schools face when using these types of solutions. This isn't a sales pitch but more an offer of a discussion to see if we could help understand your requirements and shape our solution to meet your needs?
dhicks Posted February 26, 2016 Posted February 26, 2016 This isn't a sales pitch but more an offer of a discussion to see if we could help understand your requirements and shape our solution to meet your needs? We would want to be able to run a bunch of virtual machines on local physical servers and have some kind of lovely simple just-enable-it-and-it-works system take care of mirroring those VMs to an offsite location, hopefully in as near to real-time as possible. As soon as a VM (or a whole physical server) breaks, the remote service notices and spins up a running VM. Users never notice. Also, the ability to snapshot VMs and restore from previous snapshots would be good, as well as the same for file systems - have a versioned backup system that lets users get to previous versions of their own files as they want. We currently have around 3TB of VMs (OS images) and around 6TB of user files, what sort of price would you be thinking to charge for that kind of size of system?
Arthur Posted February 26, 2016 Posted February 26, 2016 (edited) @MYK-IT. This article might be of interest... My Early Experience With Azure Backup Server In this post I want to share with you my early experience with using Microsoft Azure Backup Server (MABS) in production. I rolled it out a few weeks ago, and it’s been backing up our new Hyper-V cluster for 8 days. Lots of people are curious, so I figured I’d share information about the quality of the experience, and the amount of storage that is being used in the Azure backup vault. Disk Utilization The 8 VMs that are being protected by MABS are made up of 839 GB of VHDX files. We have 7 days of short term (local disk) retention and we’ve had 8 days of protection. Our MABS server is using 1,492.42 GB of storage. Yes, that is more than 1.5x but that is because we modified the default short-term retention policy (from 5 to 7 days) and we are creating 2 recovery points per day instead of the default of 1. We use long-term retention (Azure backup vault) for 6 of those VMs. Those VMs are made up of 716.5 GB of VHDX files. Our Azure backup vault (GRS) currently is sitting at 344.81 GB after 8 days of retention. It’s growing at around 8 GB per day. I estimate that we’ll have 521 GB of used storage in Azure after 30 days. How Much Is This Costing? I can push the sales & marketing line by saying MABS is free (I did say this already?). But obviously I’m doing disk-disk-cloud backup and there’s a cost to the cloud element. I’ve averaged out the instance sizes and here are the instance charges per month: http://i.cubeupload.com/o3HRO0.png GRS Block Blob costs $0.048 per GB per month for the first terabyte. We will have an estimated 521 GB at the end of the month so that will cost us (worst case, because you’re billed on a daily basis and we only have 344 GB today) $25. So this month, our backup software, which includes both traditional disk-disk on-premises backup and online backup for long-term retention, will cost us $25 + $60, for a relatively small $85. The math is easy, just like setting up and using MABS. Edited February 26, 2016 by Arthur 2
steve_forbes Posted February 26, 2016 Posted February 26, 2016 I'll have a look at this and come back to you with indicative pricing - obviously it will be indicative at this stage. Other than cost are there any other barriers that would prevent you from adopting this kind of backup strategy?
dhicks Posted February 26, 2016 Posted February 26, 2016 Other than cost are there any other barriers that would prevent you from adopting this kind of backup strategy? We currently use XenServer, so moving to something based on Azure is going to need a move to Hyper-V. We plan to move over when the new Server 2016 with all the snazzy storage features comes out.
robyholmes Posted February 26, 2016 Posted February 26, 2016 (edited) I've just setup Azure backup today as a trail. You can get £125 by signing up to Azure (Even through I already use it Office365 AD). I'm going to see how far this gets us. The Azure Backup Server is very interesting. Its DPM without the tape backup, but then you have Azure. Currently testing with just the Agent on one server, but moving to this DPM varient looks a good option, if the price is right. Edited February 26, 2016 by robyholmes
armadillo Posted March 3, 2016 Posted March 3, 2016 Qnap has a backup to Google drive option. If you backup to a qnap nas then just add the account details and sync it all. It's unlimited storage on GAFE and it's FREE Hi CyberNerd, could you please let me know how you set up the QNAP to backup to Google drive? I have a couple of QNAPs both with latest OS and can't find the Google dive option. Thanks in advance.
CyberNerd Posted March 3, 2016 Posted March 3, 2016 Hi CyberNerd, could you please let me know how you set up the QNAP to backup to Google drive? I have a couple of QNAPs both with latest OS and can't find the Google dive option. Thanks in advance. There is an add-on in their store. You configure it to sync to a single user account.
gjseaman Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 (edited) Currently backing up 5tb to Azure, open license £90/month. You can either use DPM2012 R2 or a separate backup on each server. Edited March 16, 2016 by gjseaman
CyberNerd Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 Currently backing up 5tb to Azure, open license £90/month. You can either use DPM2012 R2 or a separate backup on each server. Sounds like a bargain compared to paying nothing using Google ?
gjseaman Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 That's excluding VAT, however you do get the chance to test other azure products; a question on free backups to google - where is the data stored.
Steve21 Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 Currently backing up 5tb to Azure, open license £90/month. You can either use DPM2012 R2 or a separate backup on each server. Where's that pricing from? :s Got quoted loads loads more when we were looking Steve
gjseaman Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 (edited) MS - OPEN AZURE ACADEMIC Part number:5S4-00003, costing works on a credit basis 5tb works out at 18 credits @ £61.09 per credit. Azure can be bought under education licensing we us Capita as we find other providers less knowledgeable. Edited March 16, 2016 by gjseaman 2
Steve21 Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 MS - OPEN AZURE ACADEMIC Part number:5S4-00003, costing works on a credit basis 5tb works out at 18 credits @ £61.09 per credit. Azure can be bough under education licensing we us Capita as we find other provider less knowledgeable. Hmm interesting, never heard of that before. Will have to have a read into these Credit things too Thanks, Steve
Steve21 Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 You sure those credit's add up right in your calculation? Even on Microsoft website it seems to disagree with that, unless you're talking about running a separate server rather than using their backup tools? Question - Want or need more storage? You can put that into Azure (oh and by the way its IL2 Accredited) · You can move 5TB of local storage on to Azure for as little as £150 per month Question - Reviewing your existing school(s) back up services? · You can backup 100GB on Azure for £12.10 per month Using the backup figure at £12 for 100Gb, 5TB (without scaling) is £600~ which is what we were quoted before or near enough Might poke our reseller and see what the case is as makes it a lot cheaper if the £90 is the right price! Steve
CyberNerd Posted March 16, 2016 Posted March 16, 2016 That's excluding VAT, however you do get the chance to test other azure products; a question on free backups to google - where is the data stored. You don't get a choice with the free but if you pay (5TB backup is $53.76 or £38 per month) you store in the EU. https://cloud.google.com/pricing/tco/storage-nearline# The Azure is more than twice that cost.
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