djones Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 I'm looking at using online backup for a new build primary school. I'm reluctant to buy specific hardware/software when there will only be a small amount of data initially (few staff and pupils) so thought online backup solutions might work out more cost effective. I have heard of Gigasoft and Redstor (but haven't contacted them yet) from reading other posts on here. Can anyone give recommendations from their own experiences (PM if necessary)? Cheers, Dave.
bossman Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 @djones: Why not create online user accounts say with Microsoft skydrive thus having access to their documents 24/7 365 anywhere in the world and therefore not having to back them up if as you say it will be a small amount of data. Plus its free Just a thought
djones Posted April 22, 2012 Author Posted April 22, 2012 Yeah, I had thought of this along with the possibility of using Google Docs/Email etc and storage with that but thinking longer term as well. As I say, I haven't really looked at this in great detail yet just trying to gather ideas and recommendations of people/companies to talk to. We have quotes for equipment already including the standard hard/software solutions and I'd like to be able to have a different approach to weigh in the balance seeing as we wouldn't potentially be using the full capacity, certainly in the short term. Thanks.
glennda Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 (edited) What internet speed is the primary going to have? is it connected to an RBC - I know some lea's don't like schools using online backups not trying to put a downer on it but remember upload isn't always the same as download speeds on a line with 2Mb upload you will find at best 10GB takes 1 hour 23mins 50Gb takes just under 7 hours Just food for thought! You could perhaps also talk to other primarys and possibly arrange to share a server in the LEA's datacenter to all upload data too - it was one idea which was bounced around here. EDIT: I've not used this two but as of next monday I will be working with them (at my new place). http://www.databarracks.com/ http://mozy.co.uk/?ref=0811cfuk&gclid=CLTszPbnyK8CFeMLtAodEWKAYw Edited April 22, 2012 by glennda
Steve21 Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 I'm guessing it depends how big a school it will turn out to be, but kind of seems a waste setting up online storage and spending time configuring it etc etc, when for a few hundred you could get a decent raid-ed NAS box, and even if you can't afford something like backup exec, a lot of easy/free backup products/scripts you could use. Just my two cents, Steve
plexer Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 With the online solutions as you are backing up to commercial grade high availability hardware in data centres with protection plus it's offsite as well. Ben
Steve21 Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 With the online solutions as you are backing up to commercial grade high availability hardware in data centres with protection plus it's offsite as well. Ben Sure, but it's not just reliability in terms of hardware. Get a net problem, then where do you backup to? or restore from? Same old arguement for buying office 365 etc, vs buying "office". I'm also assuming things like SIMS/FMS blahblah will have to be backed up manually anyway to give clean restores. Just my two cents anyway Benefits to both ways. Steve
djones Posted April 22, 2012 Author Posted April 22, 2012 I guess I was just hoping it would be a fairly straight forward alternative! I'm not sure what connection the school will have yet - everything seems a tad vague at present! There is money available, it is just that it seems a waste to have the capacity and not use it. Maybe I am thinking the wrong way around! Perhaps it would make more sense to buy a second server and put MS DPM on it - but then I'd still have to factor in offsite backup which is another reason for me looking at the online solutions.
Brpilot99 Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 WE have an arrangement with another school where they have our large hard external hard drive attached to one of their servers ... We also have their large hard drive at our school. We use logmeinbackup to backup each others files .. cost one large hard drive plus £28.00 PA each for the licence. The initial backup was done locally and the hard drives then transported to the hosting school ....
djones Posted April 22, 2012 Author Posted April 22, 2012 Get a net problem, then where do you backup to? or restore from? If the internet was down, I'd hope it would only be for a day max and I'd hope we'd be able to cope missing a day of backups (assuming the incremental changes are all that are backup up each night). If disaster should strike during that same day, I would seriously doubt we'd have been able to restore fully in a day even with a working internet connection. I'm also assuming things like SIMS/FMS blahblah will have to be backed up manually anyway to give clean restores. Unless it is run in a hosted environment where backups are taken care off separately (I have no idea about this bit yet either!). In this case, without a working internet connection, the backups of pupil files, etc would be a lower priority anyway. Just my two cents anyway Steve Much appreciated from all!
glennda Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 In an Ideal world I would probably go with having an External HDD/NAS onsite which then replicates itself to the internet - meaning you don't have to worry about restore times for "o I deleted my folder" but have the DR stuff for when the proverbial hits the Fan.
tom_newton Posted April 22, 2012 Posted April 22, 2012 We use databarracks at our Leeds office. Bit clunky if you want to backup windows AND linux environments. We have a 100 meg symmetric, so don't see any bandwidth problem, we just about scraped by when it had ~2.5Mb up all to itself overnight though. Tech support from them is awesome. Used Mozy at Smoothwall US when it was just a handful of PCs. Seems to work ok. Am switching from Mozy to Backblaze at home - quite a bit cheaper for what I need.
djones Posted April 22, 2012 Author Posted April 22, 2012 WE have an arrangement with another school where they have our large hard external hard drive attached to one of their servers ... We also have their large hard drive at our school. We use logmeinbackup to backup each others files .. cost one large hard drive plus £28.00 PA each for the licence. The initial backup was done locally and the hard drives then transported to the hosting school .... That looks interesting. I've read a couple of people on here doing similar. I would have thought that we'd retain some form of separate local storage - even if only for archiving of non-critical data. Not sure about Hyper-V backups though? I plan on having 2x DCs but not sure how backups of VMs would work using online solutions?
Ambikas Posted April 23, 2012 Posted April 23, 2012 You could take a look at StoreGrid Cloud which is a great online backup and recovery product which provides storage in the robust Amazon S3 infrastructure. StoreGrid Cloud offers you incomparable features like protection for physical and virtual environments, instant Bare Metal recoveries, centralized management, retention and archiving plus more - at a very low price, where you actually pay only for what you store. There are no per server or fixed Gigabytes charges. Do let us know if you have any questions. Regards, Ambika
AdamToone Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 This is true with a full backup however, most softwares will only send changes in data which are de-duplicated across the site and then also compressed. With the Redstor technology you will only see between 1&2% of the overall data sizes actually be sent online. hope this helps. Adam What internet speed is the primary going to have? is it connected to an RBC - I know some lea's don't like schools using online backups not trying to put a downer on it but remember upload isn't always the same as download speeds on a line with 2Mb upload you will find at best 10GB takes 1 hour 23mins 50Gb takes just under 7 hours Just food for thought! You could perhaps also talk to other primarys and possibly arrange to share a server in the LEA's datacenter to all upload data too - it was one idea which was bounced around here. EDIT: I've not used this two but as of next monday I will be working with them (at my new place). Online Backup, Data Backup, Data Storage - Databarracks Online Backup - Remote Backup & Data Backup - Mozy.co.uk
glennda Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 This is true with a full backup however, most softwares will only send changes in data which are de-duplicated across the site and then also compressed. With the Redstor technology you will only see between 1&2% of the overall data sizes actually be sent online. hope this helps. Adam Yes but it all depends on the setup and the rate of change. If the OP is looking at backing up VM's Databarracks have just started doing Veeam backups which if needed can be hosted on there servers during a DR scenario.
Davit2005 Posted July 2, 2012 Posted July 2, 2012 We used GigaSoft originally, we only left due to our slow internet speed meaning backups weren't completing. Happy with their service overall. They did supply us with an external HDD with our data when our SAN threw a wobbly to speed restore, and their support desk was good.
armadillo Posted July 12, 2012 Posted July 12, 2012 Hi, I am looking for online/offsite backup; could you please pm me some details. thanks
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