RJohnson91 Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 Morning all, Hope everyone has recovered from staying up late watching the elections. We've had some major issues over here due to power outages, one of which corrupted a SIMS drive, now luckily we are virtual and a simple DR backup to restore it. However, this got me thinking, one of our primary schools has a physical server to hold SIMS if we were to lose that it wouldn't be half as easy to restore... Now we do run a few 'hgflesk' scripts to copy SQL database files e.t.c, but I'm not convinced that is fall proof and would like a more stable solution. What do you guys do/run to backup your SIMS server in case of a total failure? Ryan
TomFreeman Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 We use Backup Exec here to back up our SIMS server which also hosts our separate finance system, but because of the importance of it as you say, we also pay our local support company and have an offsite Redstor backup. We've had two issues this year where we have had to restore from the Redstor backup and it worked brilliantly.
SHimmer45 Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 Capita / the LEA would provide a backup script to make a copy of the actual SIMS data from SQL this with Windows Back baremetal / your chosen system state recovery should be fine i guess
RJohnson91 Posted June 9, 2017 Author Posted June 9, 2017 Capita / the LEA would provide a backup script to make a copy of the actual SIMS data from SQL this with Windows Back baremetal / your chosen system state recovery should be fine i guess I think we are using that sort of script already but it doesn't fill me with much hope! Ryan
Zipsterr Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 I agree with the Backup Exec and like tom it is also good to have a offsite back just to be safe
colly72 Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 How about Veeam Backup Agent for Windows? Not used it myself but I believe you can backup physical servers with it and its free.
SHimmer45 Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 I think we are using that sort of script already but it doesn't fill me with much hope! Ryan used it when we migrated the data to another server, and worked without an issue, the bit that would worry me is if you had to start from scratch and getting SIMS installed and setup properly before importing the data.
PotNoodleTech Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 (edited) As you already know, the best way of backing up a SIMS server is for it to be virtualised, and then you are able to regularly test full backups for real, and if the worst comes to the worst, full restore at any time onto any server hardware (and even a core2duo workstation if you absolutely had to) in an automated fashion, often in just a matter of minutes or hours. If the server is physical, then it can not be effectively backed up or restored - you are not backing up the "server", you are just backing up the "data" on it, if you then have a critical hardware failure, you can not restore the "server" on to brand new hardware, you can only restore the "data". You are also not able to effectively test the restoration of the data unless you have a second identical server to test restore to. Your set up and then restore will take hours or days and there's no guarantee the backup will be sound at the end of it. Get virtual. Even if you buy a cheap refurbished dell server to put VMware/HyperV on and then use a converter tool. It's much better than leaving it physical. Edited June 9, 2017 by PotNoodleTech 1
RJohnson91 Posted June 9, 2017 Author Posted June 9, 2017 As you already know, the best way of backing up a SIMS server is for it to be virtualised, and then you are able to regularly test full backups for real, and if the worst comes to the worst, full restore at any time onto any server hardware (and even a core2duo workstation if you absolutely had to) in an automated fashion, often in just a matter of minutes or hours. If the server is physical, then it can not be effectively backed up or restored - you are not backing up the "server", you are just backing up the "data" on it, if you then have a critical hardware failure, you can not restore the "server" on to brand new hardware, you can only restore the "data". You are also not able to effectively test the restoration of the data unless you have a second identical server to test restore to. Your set up and then restore will take hours or days and there's no guarantee the backup will be sound at the end of it. Get virtual. Even if you buy a cheap refurbished dell server to put VMware/HyperV on and then use a converter tool. It's much better than leaving it physical. Yep, totally agree. In our main school we have virtualised everything from servers to all curriculum machines, all Citrix XenDesktop ! This primary school has all servers virtualised bar the SIMS server, we have plans to do it, however it isn't right now. So a non virtual DR backup is what I need All the above ideas are great, I'm going to look into a few !
Guest kiest90 Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 I use EMS backup for my McAfee EPO server and as long as your only backing up a single DB it’s totally free
nicholab Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 (edited) Veeam agent for windows here then I copy to tape. Also i use veeamzip to backup the vm every day for SIMS. Veeam endpoint gives me 100 days on disk. It what I would use in a primary to a nas. I would then replicate to another unit. Edited June 9, 2017 by nicholab
jmcdermott Posted June 9, 2017 Posted June 9, 2017 Since having ransom where on adsoft drive from a staff laptop about a year ago I got a little paranoid and now have a VM on my laptop which I boot up every morning, which then runs a script which syncs the docstorage + adsoft folder, and imports the database backups from the previous night. In a worst case scenario I could simply point all users to the VM on my laptop we would be back up and running. Happy to provide a copy of my restore script if anyone wants it. 2
RJohnson91 Posted June 12, 2017 Author Posted June 12, 2017 Since having ransom where on adsoft drive from a staff laptop about a year ago I got a little paranoid and now have a VM on my laptop which I boot up every morning, which then runs a script which syncs the docstorage + adsoft folder, and imports the database backups from the previous night. In a worst case scenario I could simply point all users to the VM on my laptop we would be back up and running. Happy to provide a copy of my restore script if anyone wants it. This sounds interesting, I'm always partial to looking at a script regardless, so if you could post it / send it over that would be great! Ryan
PotNoodleTech Posted June 12, 2017 Posted June 12, 2017 This primary school has all servers virtualised bar the SIMS server, we have plans to do it, however it isn't right now. So a non virtual DR backup is what I need All the above ideas are great, I'm going to look into a few ! Cool. I take it your not running HyperV for the server virtualisation? I did some P2V conversions in the half term using Microsoft Virtual Machine Convertor and it was super smooth and easy peasy. Few clicks of the mouse wait an hour, job done give the new VM it's network details and boot it up! You could have that SIMS server virtual in half a day.
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