Remotely Back up a Server to External Hard Drive

[NTruong]

I'm a part of a small business that has a server which can be accessed via VPN when I'm not at the office. We are in a hurricane prone area so I would like to know how I can back up the server at our office to a remote area using an external hard drive in case we lose our building!

Are there any software, free or paid, that is capable of automatically back up files on the server that have been changed every day/week to a external hard drive connected to a remotely connected computer? Will I need to buy special hardware as well? Are there any external hard drive that comes with this software?

I've looked at EMC Retrospect but I'm not sure if that's worth it or if there's a cheaper option.

Thanks for your help. Any input is appreciated.

 

[RebateMonger]

If you think there's a chance of losing your server hardware and not being able to quickly find an exact replacement, you might consider converting to a virtual machine. Virtual hard disks can be installed on almost any PC and will work.

One approach would be to make a full system backup of your server monthly, moving that copy somewhere "safe". Then use something like RSync to make daily backups of changed data files across the VPN to another location.

 

[BushLin]

EDIT: I should read posts better sometimes, you're probably more interested in the data content of the server and automation. Veritas make reliable software for what you want to do.

I'm a big fan of Snapshot, it can image a running server and do incremental backups. There are some areas where it's not as flexible as Ghost such as restoring to different sized partitions and supporting non-Windows systems but you can always re-size a partition after restore and it runs at least twice as fast.

 

[her209]

Can you use File Replication Service?

 

[netsysadmin]

You may want to check out jungledisk. They are an online backup service. The software and space are pretty cheap. The software does a full backup intially, but then only changes later, thus saving bandwidth. Another great feature is they allow you to setup the encryption on your end of the system and they do not know your encryption keys.

http://www.jungledisk.com/

John

 

[NTruong]

What would be the best way to back up a server through VPN?

 

[Emulex]

you could snap the machine state to a directory (keep 2-3 previous backups) then RSYNC that.

iirc RSYNC can do rate limiting. or even simpler try ftp.

BESR 8.5 does ftp last time i checked.

 

[seepy83]

There are a lot of products that can do this...and most of them do it in slightly different ways, and all of them come with different price tags. In order to select the correct product, you would need to know a few things first. Depending on the complexity and needs of your business, Disaster Recovery planning can be a relatively complex process. Here's the tip of the iceburg:

-- How much data are you willing to lose in the event of a disaster? If you're working all day long and the building gets blown away at 9:00pm before the backup job runs, is the loss of that days work going to be a major problem for the company? Or do you need to have hourly or real-time replication of file changes?

-- What kind of data are you backing up? Is this just a file server with shared folders, or are there some databases involved (SQL, Exchange, etc).

-- How quickly do you need to recover (i.e. get your servers back up and running)? Hours? Days?

-- What resources will be available to you in the event of a disaster? Who will be restoring your servers and what kind of experience do they have?


You should first make an assessment of what the ideal situation would be for the business and then explore the products that can support your requirements. If you find you do not have the budget for those products, then you will need to lower your business requirements until you find some products that are a good fit.

 

[NTruong]

Originally posted by: seepy83
There are a lot of products that can do this...and most of them do it in slightly different ways, and all of them come with different price tags. In order to select the correct product, you would need to know a few things first. Depending on the complexity and needs of your business, Disaster Recovery planning can be a relatively complex process. Here's the tip of the iceburg:

-- How much data are you willing to lose in the event of a disaster? If you're working all day long and the building gets blown away at 9:00pm before the backup job runs, is the loss of that days work going to be a major problem for the company? Or do you need to have hourly or real-time replication of file changes?

-- What kind of data are you backing up? Is this just a file server with shared folders, or are there some databases involved (SQL, Exchange, etc).

-- How quickly do you need to recover (i.e. get your servers back up and running)? Hours? Days?

-- What resources will be available to you in the event of a disaster? Who will be restoring your servers and what kind of experience do they have?


You should first make an assessment of what the ideal situation would be for the business and then explore the products that can support your requirements. If you find you do not have the budget for those products, then you will need to lower your business requirements until you find some products that are a good fit.

1st Question: Ideally, I'd like a full system back up then incremental back up at the end of every business day. However, I would like a low cost plan. If this means a weekly back up then I think it would be justifiable.

2nd Question: I would like to back up a server that stores our work data on a local network at work. The server is only 1 TB, and it's not even fully utilized. There are no databases involved. The back up would happen at a remote location using VPN.

3rd Question: Given that our server is relatively small (<1TB) I don't see why we can't get our stuff back and running within one day.

4th Question: We would like to restore our server ourselves. I'd assume it would be as easy as buying a new server and using the back up copy to restore the data that was on the old server.

In addition, are there any solutions for backing up that would not require a computer hooked up to the device at all times?

Originally posted by: Emulex
you could snap the machine state to a directory (keep 2-3 previous backups) then RSYNC that.

iirc RSYNC can do rate limiting. or even simpler try ftp.

BESR 8.5 does ftp last time i checked.

I assume RSYNC requires the back up drive to be attached to the computer running the software? I would like to know if it's possible to have a back up drive that is capable of doing back up without the need for a computer to be on 24/7.

Would a NAS work?

 

[seepy83]

Originally posted by: NTruong

Originally posted by: seepy83
There are a lot of products that can do this...and most of them do it in slightly different ways, and all of them come with different price tags. In order to select the correct product, you would need to know a few things first. Depending on the complexity and needs of your business, Disaster Recovery planning can be a relatively complex process. Here's the tip of the iceburg:

-- How much data are you willing to lose in the event of a disaster? If you're working all day long and the building gets blown away at 9:00pm before the backup job runs, is the loss of that days work going to be a major problem for the company? Or do you need to have hourly or real-time replication of file changes?

-- What kind of data are you backing up? Is this just a file server with shared folders, or are there some databases involved (SQL, Exchange, etc).

-- How quickly do you need to recover (i.e. get your servers back up and running)? Hours? Days?

-- What resources will be available to you in the event of a disaster? Who will be restoring your servers and what kind of experience do they have?


You should first make an assessment of what the ideal situation would be for the business and then explore the products that can support your requirements. If you find you do not have the budget for those products, then you will need to lower your business requirements until you find some products that are a good fit.

1st Question: Ideally, I'd like a full system back up then incremental back up at the end of every business day. However, I would like a low cost plan. If this means a weekly back up then I think it would be justifiable.

2nd Question: I would like to back up a server that stores our work data on a local network at work. The server is only 1 TB, and it's not even fully utilized. There are no databases involved. The back up would happen at a remote location using VPN.

3rd Question: Given that our server is relatively small (<1TB) I don't see why we can't get our stuff back and running within one day.

4th Question: We would like to restore our server ourselves. I'd assume it would be as easy as buying a new server and using the back up copy to restore the data that was on the old server.

In addition, are there any solutions for backing up that would not require a computer hooked up to the device at all times?

Now we're getting somewhere...

You said your server has 1TB of storage on it, but it's not all used. How much of it is being used?

The reason I ask, is because if you are trying to do full backups over a VPN, you're going to need to move all of that data in whatever time-frame you have for your backups (sometime overnight, usually). Depending on how much you can afford for bandwidth, that might be totally impracticle.

On the other hand, if this is really just a File Server, you might look into a program that replicates changes to files in real time (like Symantec's Continuous Protection Server). With that software, you can do your initial data load onto the backup server locally (preferrably over 1Gb LAN connection) so that it runs quickly. Then when you move the server to the secondary location it, CPS will replicate file adds/changes over the VPN connection.

 

[NTruong]

Originally posted by: seepy83

Originally posted by: NTruong

Originally posted by: seepy83
There are a lot of products that can do this...and most of them do it in slightly different ways, and all of them come with different price tags. In order to select the correct product, you would need to know a few things first. Depending on the complexity and needs of your business, Disaster Recovery planning can be a relatively complex process. Here's the tip of the iceburg:

-- How much data are you willing to lose in the event of a disaster? If you're working all day long and the building gets blown away at 9:00pm before the backup job runs, is the loss of that days work going to be a major problem for the company? Or do you need to have hourly or real-time replication of file changes?

-- What kind of data are you backing up? Is this just a file server with shared folders, or are there some databases involved (SQL, Exchange, etc).

-- How quickly do you need to recover (i.e. get your servers back up and running)? Hours? Days?

-- What resources will be available to you in the event of a disaster? Who will be restoring your servers and what kind of experience do they have?


You should first make an assessment of what the ideal situation would be for the business and then explore the products that can support your requirements. If you find you do not have the budget for those products, then you will need to lower your business requirements until you find some products that are a good fit.

1st Question: Ideally, I'd like a full system back up then incremental back up at the end of every business day. However, I would like a low cost plan. If this means a weekly back up then I think it would be justifiable.

2nd Question: I would like to back up a server that stores our work data on a local network at work. The server is only 1 TB, and it's not even fully utilized. There are no databases involved. The back up would happen at a remote location using VPN.

3rd Question: Given that our server is relatively small (<1TB) I don't see why we can't get our stuff back and running within one day.

4th Question: We would like to restore our server ourselves. I'd assume it would be as easy as buying a new server and using the back up copy to restore the data that was on the old server.

In addition, are there any solutions for backing up that would not require a computer hooked up to the device at all times?

Now we're getting somewhere...

You said your server has 1TB of storage on it, but it's not all used. How much of it is being used?

The reason I ask, is because if you are trying to do full backups over a VPN, you're going to need to move all of that data in whatever time-frame you have for your backups (sometime overnight, usually). Depending on how much you can afford for bandwidth, that might be totally impracticle.

On the other hand, if this is really just a File Server, you might look into a program that replicates changes to files in real time (like Symantec's Continuous Protection Server). With that software, you can do your initial data load onto the backup server locally (preferrably over 1Gb LAN connection) so that it runs quickly. Then when you move the server to the secondary location it, CPS will replicate file adds/changes over the VPN connection.

The server only has 155 GB used.

That is exactly the plan, to do the full back up on the local network then using VPN at a remote location to do incremental. My main question is that, will CPS run on a NAS? I would like to avoid buying a computer just to run the program.

 

[seepy83]

To the best of my knowledge, CPS will not run on a NAS. It has a handful of services that need to be running on the destination computer.

If the NAS on the other end of your VPN is set up as a mapped network drive on a PC at your primary location, you might be able to get the data where you want it. I would suggest talking to Symantec (tell the Sales Rep that you would like to speak with an Engineer) to find out if they think it's a practicle solution.

 

[NTruong]

Originally posted by: seepy83
To the best of my knowledge, CPS will not run on a NAS. It has a handful of services that need to be running on the destination computer.

If the NAS on the other end of your VPN is set up as a mapped network drive on a PC at your primary location, you might be able to get the data where you want it. I would suggest talking to Symantec (tell the Sales Rep that you would like to speak with an Engineer) to find out if they think it's a practicle solution.

Will do, thanks for the help.

 

[imagoon]

Remember that in best conditions, a T1 can handle (1.536 Mb/s) 1GB / every 1.55 hours. Off site backups need to be handled with the expectation of the time involved. That 155 GB would take 241ish hours to move, assuming that everything went as planed @ 100%. You need to look at how much stuff changes (incremental) and plan accordingly. The T1 number is to provide an estimate by the way, remember that in most cases using something like DSL might be 8mb/1mb which is slower and you still have to deal with Internet lag.

CPS can be a good solution, just make sure you plan for the how much actually changes. Also the destination CPS machine will often need more disk than the machine it backs up to keep old copies of files.

I personally am still a fan of off system backups. Call me old fashioned but there is a warm comfy feeling having the company tape in hand when "Virus X" is busily formatting the server and the CPS backup machine.

 

[seepy83]

Originally posted by: imagoon
Remember that in best conditions, a T1 can handle (1.536 Mb/s) 1GB / every 1.55 hours. Off site backups need to be handled with the expectation of the time involved. That 155 GB would take 241ish hours to move, assuming that everything went as planed @ 100%. You need to look at how much stuff changes (incremental) and plan accordingly. The T1 number is to provide an estimate by the way, remember that in most cases using something like DSL might be 8mb/1mb which is slower and you still have to deal with Internet lag.

CPS can be a good solution, just make sure you plan for the how much actually changes. Also the destination CPS machine will often need more disk than the machine it backs up to keep old copies of files.

I personally am still a fan of off system backups. Call me old fashioned but there is a warm comfy feeling having the company tape in hand when "Virus X" is busily formatting the server and the CPS backup machine.

Absolutely. I would be looking at Tape Backup as a primary solution, and data replicated to a seconday server/location after that.

If you can afford both Tape backup and CPS, then do both. If you can only afford one, I'd do tapes that are taken off-site daily and on a rotation schedule that is reasonable for your business.