Peer-to-peer backup... Please help

[pelle]

At my work we have a peer-to-peer network with about 30 Win98 desktops. Each one has it's My Documents folder shared with a read/write password assigned. The boss had been manually connecting to each machine, one at a time and backing up the data to tape.

I thought we might be able to automate the process a bit, so I picked up a copy of Veritas Backup Exec Desktop Pro - the description said it was designed to backup a peer-to-peer network via one workstation. The problem is that they don't let you know up front that they "feel" that a peer-to-peer network is limited to 10 stations and they want you to map all the other workstations as drives on the system where you installed the software.

Is there a way to map network drives beyond the point where you would run out of drive letters? Or is there another piece of software that will backup peer-to-peer and handle the passwords properly? Or does anyone have a better solution to handle this situation?

 

[Norssak]

Better solution:
Shoot the person who came up with that scheme!

There is a MS utility called Distributed File System, which allows you to pool several Mapped shares into one letter drive. This might work, if you can either get the backup box to cache the passwords, or simply remove them.

This is a truely obnoxious senario, get an NT server, then you can have functional user account managment, as well as easily redirect all those My Document folders reside on a server share.

Veritas Backup Exec is a very good product. Modify your network to fit its needs, not the other way around.

I repeat, shoot the person that made this happen!

 

[pelle]

Well, I've looked around and it seems that DFS requires Windows NT 4.0 or 2000 on the network, so that won't work. I might be wrong, but show me....I've been looking.

Getting an NT Server is not an option right now. Cost for the machine and software, and then the time to maintain it... I'm the only one there that knows anything about networking or servers and I just can't handle my current workload as it is-I'm also the help desk guy/telecom guy/website guy/etc.

The Veritas software doesn't seem to have anything more than the built-in Windows 98 backup software, so what makes it so much better? I may just not be aware of something - please clue me in.

 

[Shuxclams]

<< Getting an NT Server is not an option right now. Cost for the machine and software, and then the time to maintain it... I'm the only one there that knows anything about networking or servers and I just can't handle my current workload >>

Au-contraire, getting a server will save much time indeed, for you and your LAN. With a server all the clients will have a &quot;pooled&quot; drive that will be automatically backup each nite. All your sofware can be updated and loaded from one source. You will have better control of the permissions and usage of the clients and on and on....





SHUX

 

[Shuxclams]

OBTW, technically a Peer-Peer should only be 10 or less.




SHUX

 

[Norssak]

I agree 100% with Shuxclams! And repeat my pervious plea to have the person responsible shot. Getting a server is something you should have done 15 computers ago. There is a DFS version that works on W95 (and no-doubt W98) If you can't find it I can email it to you.

Backup Exec is liquid gold compared to MS backup (I only know the NT servion of both)everything from media management, to scheduling, to recovery is handled by the program. I mean can you schedule your MS Backup to perform a fullbackup every friday at 10pm, and then perform an incremental backup mon-thur at midnight? And then how would you go about reconstructing a data directory to a condition it was in three weeks ago?

It's like comparing a mechanical pencil to a crayon.

And Shuxclams, what porn?

 

[TonDef]

If you must do peer-to-peer for that many boxes, I'd suggest setting aside a single Win9x box to be the shared &quot;server&quot; rather than having so many distributed &quot;My Documents&quot; folders. Map everyone a drive to it and have them save their documents there. It's been so long since I did peer-to-peer, though...I can't remember how many simultaneous connections a single node can handle.

 

[vi edit]

Another serious vote for going the NT Server route. Hell, maybe even setting up a Linux box w/ Samba for file sharing would work.

But anyway, right now you should be able to pick up NT Server for a relatively inexpensive amount of money. It will still run you a couple hundred bucks, but the time that they have you running around taking care of all of this will more than be paid off.

We run a 20 PC peer-peer network with 98 and 95 machines, one NT Workstation, and one NT Server. The NT Server has one shared drive with all the shared word and excel documents. All users have their own &quot;personal folders&quot; that only they have access to, and all print jobs are filed through the NT Server.

The NT workstation box has a 20 gig tape backup that backs up data in three ways every night -
1) all accounting data is wrote to a re-writable CDRW everynight and taken home with me. A seperate media is used for every friday of the month.

2) All shared data on the NT Server box is backed up to a mirrored array on the NT workstation for rapid restore if needed - I keep all data back for a week

3) A tape backup is made of all shared data on the NT server, all &quot;my documents&quot;, &quot;application data&quot;, and &quot;favorites&quot; folders of all the machines in the workgroup.

I also make weekly images of all of the machines of the office with Drive Image Pro.

Yes...I am paranoid

3)

 

[vi edit]

one other thing - I've seen NT Workstation licenses going for $15 in the FS/T forums. You could use the NT Workstation so long as you only had 10 people connecting to it at a time.

You could also still continue using your backup exec for workgroups. If you went the NT Server route, veritas would make you bump up to backup exec enterprise edition.

 

[Shuxclams]

<< I also make weekly images of all of the machines of the office with Drive Image Pro. >>



vi, make one image to blow onto the client when they crash it. I warn all my users that anything they &quot;choose&quot; to keep locally will not be backed up and if their PC crashes they will not get it back. PERIOD





SHUX