Backup Solutions

[James_C]

This may have been asked before but a quick search didnt reveal much.

 

Anyhow - what does everyone use/like/dislike etc for backups.

 

We are currently running mostly Win2008r2 servers, all are virtual on Hyper-V. Dell equallogic storage array which is replicated to a second equallogic storage array.

Our backup solution although it does exsist, it is a little wishy washy using Windows Server Backup with disk and tape solutions and numerous work arounds and robocopy etc, so I really want to clean it up.

 

We do have SQL servers, but no exchange servers (using live@edu) for staff and student email.

 

Believe it or not the school has had a CommVault licence for the past 2year but they never implemented it and it is about to expire. And considering it costs bucket loads and I see it for a larger enterprise type environment I am steering away from it. And I have spent my first 6 months there trying to filter through out dated or non existant documentation and other half implemented systems otherwise I would have had a crack at it myself.

 

I am currently looking at a Dell AppAssure solution for them and speaking with Dell it is going to be heaps cheaper than CommVault, it will back up to the second equallogic array and then from there to long term archive backups. And they will implement it for us whilst conducting admin training. Although it is not as feature packed and has some limitations, it meets the needs of a school environment.

 

But now I am looking at the Windows System Center 2012 (any comments apprecaited - dont know much about it)

 

Anyhow that should get the ball rolling and I would love to hear your thoughts.

Cheers

James

[strawberry]

DPM will do all of that and possibly quite cheaply as well if you have a VLA.

[Brpilot99]

We have a large 2 tb hard drive located in a partner school and use logmein backup. The licence is or was £28.00 per year

[VeryPC_Ed]

DPM will do all of that and possibly quite cheaply as well if you have a VLA.

 

Second this, DPM is a great option if you're Hyper-V based and pricing is cheap through VLA.

[jamesfed]

DPM is cheap and easy to put in place

 

Does Hyper-V snapshots so you can restore entire machines to a Hyper-V host in minutes as well as volume/file based backup/restore. SQL backup/restore is part of it as well.

 

We built a custom storage box for our DPM server - 8x1TB HDDs in a 2U case with a AMD mobo and SSD sitting behind it (short term backup) which then talks to our older tape drive which does our monthly stuff.

 

I would strongly suggest a separate HDD/SSD for the OS partition - this makes sure that SQL operations on the server do not slow down the backup.

[Michael]

I use NTBackup on 2003 Servers and Backup Assist on 2008 R2. Backup Assist still uses Windows Server Backup (in the background) but gives you lots of great options. Highly recommended.

[plexer]

If you're wanting to backup vm's the hyperoo is cheap and does what it says on the tin.

 

Ben

[glennda]

Veeam! By far the most complete Virtual backup platform and is so easy to setup/use/work with!

[James_C]

Thanks for those comments. Spoke with Dell and they did a demo for us on their AppAssure software and now I am more uncertain than ever as it is lacking a few components which I was after. It appears to make the assumption that users of their system is going to be running shadow copy and using that for short timeframe file recovery, and only use their back up solution for full volume / VM recovery and not for individual files and folders without mounting the whole volume first.