Backup Software

[jmak]

Probably about time I butted out, but that quite often doesn't stop me....

 

I'd have an OU for each year group and an OU for leavers from each year group.

 

You can then move individual leavers into the group relatively easily, move everyone who leaves at the end of year 11 six months after they leave without affecting those starting sixth form and then the remaining ones six months after A level results.

 

I'd have coursework in folders by subject and year group and I'd keep those until six months after the results were issued. I'd justify keeping them beyond when someone left mid-course on the basis it would be in their interest as they'd be highly likely to continue the same course elsewhere and the new school might want the input of a previous teacher.

[icttech1981]

Another vote for Veeam here. As someone has said, free for up to 10VM's.

 

One way round this if you have more is install it onto 2 different servers to double up. I know that means more backup storage drives and making sure everyone knows whats backed up and how/where but it's a good workaround for me.

[Steve21]

Another vote for Veeam here. As someone has said, free for up to 10VM's.

 

One way round this if you have more is install it onto 2 different servers to double up. I know that means more backup storage drives and making sure everyone knows whats backed up and how/where but it's a good workaround for me.

 

That's breaking Veeams T&C, you can't install two copies under the free option.

 

"Sharing of the Source Infrastructure between different Community Edition and Free Licenses is prohibited. This includes using multiple Community Edition deployments, or using both paid licenses and Community Edition deployments, to protect different parts of the same Source Infrastructure."

 

Steve

[Falok]

Acronis is very handy for your requirements and also take Syncback and Gs Richcopy 360 into consideration as a best alternatives

[mrstrong]

Only got one physical host server here (it runs a hyper-v DC) so I guess veam is not an option, unless it could go on a PC?

We want to backup the hyper-v DC and some office 365 teams / onedrive

Any suggestions ?

Only real requirement is we must have an offline copy.

 

edit:

@jamoritch were you not happy with redstor ?

Edited March 13, 2023 by mrstrong

[CHiLL]

Only got one physical host server here (it runs a hyper-v DC) so I guess veam is not an option, unless it could go on a PC?

We want to backup the hyper-v DC and some office 365 teams / onedrive

Any suggestions ?

Only real requirement is we must have an offline copy.

If you install the Veeam community edition on another server, you can use that to target the physical DC (this is how we backup our physical DC and two technician workstations). It works by installing an agent onto the machine and that runs the job, rather than the backup server itself. We also have a paid for Veeam license for our multiple VMs and we used the same NAS/repository for the community edition that we already use for our VM version, so at least all our backup files are stored together.

[superatticman]

Does anyone use Gridstore as provided by LGFL? Believe this is a version of Attix 5?

 

We presently use Arcserve UDP of which has been a reliable solution overall. However we are looking at the longer term with an open mind and have a 'bundled in' potential backup solution that we are going to investigate.

[mrstrong]

If you install the Veeam community edition on another server, you can use that to target the physical DC (this is how we backup our physical DC and two technician workstations). It works by installing an agent onto the machine and that runs the job, rather than the backup server itself. We also have a paid for Veeam license for our multiple VMs and we used the same NAS/repository for the community edition that we already use for our VM version, so at least all our backup files are stored together.

 

thanks, so maybe veam could be an option after all. Do you keep offline copies though and if so how does that work?

[CHiLL]

thanks, so maybe veam could be an option after all. Do you keep offline copies though and if so how does that work?

We have a NAS in another building, which has power on/off timers and a backup copy job configured in Veeam. So for example, it'll come on Friday 4pm and turn off Monday 5am and the backup copy job runs during that window. We also have 2x external 12TB HDDs (one each for me and my boss), which we connect on alternating months. Sicne we have a QNAP NAS as our backup repository, we use of it's built-in apps to copy all backup files from the QNAP to the external drive, which we then take home. None of that is ideal, but it's filling it's purpose for the moment at least.

[Squelch]

We have a NAS in another building, which has power on/off timers and a backup copy job configured in Veeam. So for example, it'll come on Friday 4pm and turn off Monday 5am and the backup copy job runs during that window. We also have 2x external 12TB HDDs (one each for me and my boss), which we connect on alternating months. Sicne we have a QNAP NAS as our backup repository, we use of it's built-in apps to copy all backup files from the QNAP to the external drive, which we then take home. None of that is ideal, but it's filling it's purpose for the moment at least.

 

Are you using Hyper Backup to backup to the external drives? If so how are you getting it to actually back anything up within your lifetime? The best result I've ever had is it taking 7 days to not back anything up and then crash. It's tediously slow, slower even than our PE teacher.

 

Edit:

 

Ah forget it, I read QNAP for Synology somehow.

Edited March 15, 2023 by Squelch

[LeMarchand]

Are you using Hyper Backup to backup to the external drives? If so how are you getting it to actually back anything up within your lifetime? The best result I've ever had is it taking 7 days to not back anything up and then crash. It's tediously slow, slower even than our PE teacher.

 

Probably nowhere near the quantity of data you need, but ours take a bit over 5 hours to do 4 VMs, total 2.6TB (but only a few GB actually transferred) for the incrementals. Looks like the last time I started from scratch it was closer to 9 hours.

[PotNoodleTech]

I archive off our Veeam backups to hard drives plugged into a USB caddy too. Does about 20-25MB/s which for 3tb takes a while I usually leave it overnight but it does copy and is reliable copying i.e i never come back the next day to find a failed copy?.

 

Not taken home - stored in a safe the other side of the school.

 

I hope you guys have encryption enabled on all these external hard drive backups that some of you are taking home!

[Squelch]

Probably nowhere near the quantity of data you need, but ours take a bit over 5 hours to do 4 VMs, total 2.6TB (but only a few GB actually transferred) for the incrementals. Looks like the last time I started from scratch it was closer to 9 hours.

 

Hyper Backup started at 13.30 today, 15-03-2023

Let's see how long it takes to backup 2.8TB of M365 data. I have paused the M365 backup while it happens.

[LeMarchand]

Hyper Backup started at 13.30 today, 15-03-2023

Let's see how long it takes to backup 2.8TB of M365 data. I have paused the M365 backup while it happens.

 

Good luck.

 

If it makes any difference, we have a USB 3 UASP card* installed with a Startech caddy that we slot 3.5 drives (WD Red) into.

 

*Thinks: Maybe lack of this is why the Windows Server Backup is so slow at another site...

[CHiLL]

Are you using Hyper Backup to backup to the external drives? If so how are you getting it to actually back anything up within your lifetime? The best result I've ever had is it taking 7 days to not back anything up and then crash. It's tediously slow, slower even than our PE teacher.

 

Edit:

 

Ah forget it, I read QNAP for Synology somehow.

Ah ok, though I'll give info for you anyone who may want info at a later point.

 

We use the HBS 3 Hybrid Backup Sync app from the QNAP app store (which is a free first party app).

With the USB drive connected to the QNAP, I created a job and configured the source and destination.

Schedule set to run automatically when the drive is connected and eject when the job completes (this is annoying if the job fails, as it still ejects the drive)

Job rules set to include filters, specified with the following parameters: Include files dated within the last 7 days and only *.vbm and *.vbk files. Exclude *.vib files (reason being that we do incremental backups with synthetic full backups created on a weekly basis - with different servers scheduled on different days as to not overload the CPU in the QNAP. Therefore all servers have a .vbk file created dated within the last week - a full backup file that can be used for a server restore).

Since the drive and USB port on the QNAP are both USB 3.0, the job that ran earlier this week reported an average file transfer speed of 137.88MB/s and took a 7 hours, 19 minutes and 11 seconds to transfer a total of 3.46TB (we are a relatively small secondary school and our data volume isn't massive).

 

I hope that helps.

[Squelch]

8 hours in and Hyper Backup is still "Checking source file size". It's a DS620Slim with the standard 2gb ram, I have read that more ram might help and I may give that a try.

To be honest, if it took the entire weekend to back up to an external drive I would accept that, I'm not going to be backing up more than monthly anyway, I just want some cold storage in case of you know what.

[mrstrong]

slightly off topic but hoping someone can put my mind at rest:

 

we have a windows server backup job to a NAS using iscsi.

If the server was "lost" so we just had the NAS could we recover ?

e.g. could i spin up another server and connect to NAS over iscsi to

recover the data?

I'm sure I've tried before to browse the files on the NAS but I don't think

it is possible as it is "block level storage" ?!

 

I think if you use windows server backup to backup say a hyper-v VM to a

usb drive you can connect the usb drive to a PC, then browse to see the vhdx.

 

Is this how veam works too i.e. you can "see" the files like a vhdx for a vm

so you could mount it direct from nas ?

[LeMarchand]

Hyper Backup started at 13.30 today, 15-03-2023

Let's see how long it takes to backup 2.8TB of M365 data. I have paused the M365 backup while it happens.

 

Ours is running on the host (probably not best practise) so has a lot of resources, but I just checked another site where it runs from a VM and it seems to take 3 hours for around 2/3rds of the data. Nothing as complex as M365 though.

[LeMarchand]

8 hours in and Hyper Backup is still "Checking source file size". It's a DS620Slim with the standard 2gb ram, I have read that more ram might help and I may give that a try.

To be honest, if it took the entire weekend to back up to an external drive I would accept that, I'm not going to be backing up more than monthly anyway, I just want some cold storage in case of you know what.

 

I've seen it hang at that stage when there has been a problem with my job setup, but it normally times out and throws an error. As an experiment, it might be worth testing a newly-created job with a formatted disk.

[Squelch]

I think it's the sheer amount of files. I tried copying them using file explorer and it took about 16 hours to discover all the files before telling me that "something went wrong" when copying those files. Another wasted day

I'll update once anything significant happens. Possibly after Easter at this rate.

[LeMarchand]

If you're still subscribed to VEEAM it might be worth contacting them. This can't be the only time someone has had a need to backup something like this and they may be able to advise on the best way to do it.

[Squelch]

This is a Synology NAS which is backing up our M365 tenant. I am trying to get a cold backup of the NAS using the built in Hyper Backup software.

I wish I was dealing with Veeam as it would be much easier..

[LeMarchand]

Sorry! Been talking at cross purposes!

[ChrisC]

slightly off topic but hoping someone can put my mind at rest:

 

we have a windows server backup job to a NAS using iscsi.

If the server was "lost" so we just had the NAS could we recover ?

e.g. could i spin up another server and connect to NAS over iscsi to

recover the data?

I'm sure I've tried before to browse the files on the NAS but I don't think

it is possible as it is "block level storage" ?!

 

I think if you use windows server backup to backup say a hyper-v VM to a

usb drive you can connect the usb drive to a PC, then browse to see the vhdx.

 

Is this how veam works too i.e. you can "see" the files like a vhdx for a vm

so you could mount it direct from nas ?

 

You'd need an instance of veeam somewhere to access them to actually use in terms of restoring etc.

 

As long as you also have a backup of the config somewhere available (so not just on the backup server). You can setup a new instance of veeam on another box, import the config and then be able to restore/carry on as before.

 

The other option would be to create a new veeam server and then connect to the NAS and import the backup files into the new instance. As long as you can reconnect to the cluster/hosts you were originally backing up, you can then remap these backups to the protected client.

[mrstrong]

sorry @ChrisC I wasn't clear, we are not using veam at the moment, we are looking at various backup options.

 

We are currently using "windows server backup" that comes built in as part of the microsoft server 2012R2 OS

This server connects to a NAS over iscsi. To the server it just looks like another local disk that it is backing up to.

But when I log into the the NAS I am unable to see the backup files e.g. like the .vhdx of the hyper-v guest disks

I think this is because it is a "block level storage"

 

So my question was in essence if we loose the server (that connects to the NAS over iscsi) are we stuffed or

can I spin up another server and connect to the NAS over iscsi to get at the data ?

 

Maybe we would need to export / backup the exiting iscsi config first?