Backing up to a Buffalo Terastation (any thoughts or known issues)

[IT_Man_Dan]

Evening all,

 

At my school we currently have Backup Exec 2010 and we backup to tapes.

 

I'm looking at buying a big NAS server which will be housed in a completely different building to backup to each day overnight.

I'm looking at purchasing a Buffalo Terastation as I've had good experiences with them in the past.

 

Before I go out and buy it has anyone got any thoughts, known issues, or suggestions?

 

How easy is it to configure Backup Exec 2010 to backup to a NAS server as I have only ever worked with tapes.

 

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Many thanks in advance.

Dan

[3s-gtech]

1. I wouldn't go for the Terastation, I have a few and they're not great tbh. Very happy with my iomega StorCentre though, all the same features but better!

2. I backup to mine using Robocopy. It depends what you need - if Backup Exec is happy with non NTFS drives as destination (unlike Windows backup) then I don't see an issue.

[glennda]

Personally I would go for an Iomega one. They are brilliant and also support upload of the backup stuff atomatically to the cloud if its a future requirement.

[MicrodigitUK]

I have never had any issues with terastations and backupexec, but would go for a PRO version. Just so you can join to the domain. LIVE versions don't binde to windows domains. I once had to flash a terastation live with pro firmware just to get it to join the domain. Not fun and not supported, so pay a bit more for the pro version.

[twin--turbo]

We bought a Terrastation 8TB Pro earlier this year.

 

Quite frankly it is utter garbage.

 

It's joined to the domain but we can hardly ever get to the shares unless we are using one of it's local service accounts. If you use the IP instead of the name in DNS it's not going to work at all connecting it's windows shares.

 

NFS can't be forced into async so performance on NFS is dreadful

 

 

I built an Openfiler SAN on an old PC and it outperforms and has more functions than the Buffalo..

 

Rob

[Ashm]

I'll have to admit I've not been particularly impressed with Terastations, they make okay general backup devices but I've found they're pretty slow in actual usage. I've always heard good things about the Iomega devices.

 

We did do a similar thing with putting a large NAS in another building for backup and in the end we went with a custom built linux server which gave us the flexibility we needed.

[synaesthesia]

We've got a few. Great general storage but for backup, on recent experience I'd say avoid them.

[twin--turbo]

I have actualy got a very convoluted setup in testing at the moment..

 

Our old ISCSI array is a datastore on VMWARE, we have an openfile on vmware which uses 2 256GB drives created on the ISCSI, datastore, the open filer shares them as NFS (and samba) the NFS share is also a datastore back to VMWARE.

 

That allows GhetoVCB to back up to the "Localish" datastore, and XEN to backup to the NFS, therefore both utilising the ISCSI storage...

 

In testing the Buffalo was slow , the ISCSI fast but can't share it all with XEN and VM at the same time, and convoluted homebrew nfs was almost as fast.....

 

Rob

[Ashm]

I have actualy got a very convoluted setup in testing at the moment..

 

Our old ISCSI array is a datastore on VMWARE, we have an openfile on vmware which uses 2 256GB drives created on the ISCSI, datastore, the open filer shares them as NFS (and samba) the NFS share is also a datastore back to VMWARE.

 

That allows GhetoVCB to back up to the "Localish" datastore, and XEN to backup to the NFS, therefore both utilising the ISCSI storage...

 

In testing the Buffalo was slow , the ISCSI fast but can't share it all with XEN and VM at the same time, and convoluted homebrew nfs was almost as fast.....

 

Rob

You can't beat a bit of GhetoVCB, it is the ultimate VMWare backup script especially for the free version of ESXi!

[john]

Avoid the Terrorstations (yes I do mean to spell it that way!) best use I've found for them is a step stool or a tiny seat to sit on when working in your server room that hasn't got room to fit a chair in!

 

I've had better reliability from Netgear ReadyNAS (the expensive ones not the cheapest of the cheap ones)

[Lee_K_81]

Depending on budget there's a piece of software called datastor EPS (Source-Based Deduplication Backup Software) that is really good. Pricey though. Quantum (tape drive/backup device specialists) do an OEM implementation on their NDX-8D server (NDX-8 Series NAS Storage).

Software does agentless client side de-duplication reducing network bandwidth, backups of full system, files, exchange, sql, etc. Pretty good software. Misco sell the quantum implementation with basic license, host server and 10 windows client (xp, 7 etc.) version for around £3k ex.vat (Quantum NDX-8d NAS Data Protection Storage System- Tower- DATASTOR Shield Deduplication Software - 8TB (raw)- (DNADS-CSTQ-008A) - www.misco.co.uk i'm sure you can add additional licensing. Quantum also offer an unlimited license version - industry pricing is around £5.5k-6k ex.vat but they may offer edu pricing. Big selling point to SLT that their entire laptop can be backed up weekly and full restoration in a couple of hours in event of hard drive failure etc.

 

* i don't work for either datastor, quantum or any reseller, just evaluating the software myself and thought it may interest.