In the process of building a ESXi solution and considering different VM configurations.

 

Here's what I would like to do, and the not complete solution that I have derived.

 

Objective's:

(1) Complete system backups of all my local machines, both OSX, Linux, and Windows platforms.  Would prefer versioning in this capability.  Ability to do full restores from this system.

(2) Automated/Managed backups of critical folders on all clients (different platforms), things like photos, critical documents, etc...  Maintain local copies as well as upload to cloud.

(3) Backup's of all VM's on unraid target.

 

Here's my non complete solution:

(ALL) ESXi system running unraid in addition to the following...

(1) For windows clients a VM running WHS 2011.  OSX either run the timemachine plugin or run OSX server in a VM, for Linux script with rsync for system backups.  Also considering a Ghost server for system images as well.

(2) Local backup software on both OSX and Windows to backup directly to the unraid VM.  Then use crashplan either on an Windows XP VM or as a plugin on unraid to upload these files to the cloud.

(3) Script ESXi VM backups to unraid

 

Issues:

(1) I do not want my windows backups to reside on a non-protected WHS drive, from what I have read thus far it is not possible to get WHS to backup directly to a network target?  Not sure of a solution at this point.

Do i really need to run OSX server in a VM for timemachine backups or should i just run the plugin?  Also considering running an iTunes server.

 

(2) Need easy script solution, for windows i am considering scripting on the WHS side to backup these specific directories to the unraid & cloud protected target.  If i end up running extra software client side it needs to be automatic and not timed as all my machines are laptop and usually off durning the night so timed backups at say 1am will never work.

Last time i tired using crashplan to backup to a local crashplan server would not allow you to then backup the final unraid files to the cloud.  It will if you purchase the multi computer plan upload to the cloud and then to the local server.  Crashplan also sufferers from the timed backup issues with laptops where most of my machines are off when convenient backups are optimal.

 

(3) No issues i can see here, though i have yet to build the machine and attempt any of this.

Getting ready to finish up this build and start deploying VM's.  I'll continue to report back what I find.

Any progress?

 

Looking for an easy way to backup directories identically to unRaid from Windows. I currently use Crashplan but some of the stuff I would like in directory form and accessible. Automated is preferred but not necessarily realtime.

I've used microsoft's synctoy to backup machines.  It can be setup on a schedule.

 

It literally can "echo" (point A (pc) to point B (unraid)) files.  The downside is, backing up directories like "users" creates a TON of small files.  Mine is a pretty fresh windows load, and there are 10,000 files in there.

Thanks RokleM. Totally forgot I used that years ago. Small, free and worked well. I assume it works fine on Win7.  Mainly Documents/Pics backup. Nice to be able to access those directly rather than just restore from Crashplan.

Yes, no issues with 7.

Any progress?

 

Looking for an easy way to backup directories identically to unRaid from Windows. I currently use Crashplan but some of the stuff I would like in directory form and accessible. Automated is preferred but not necessarily realtime.

 

Have not come up with a complete solution as of yet.  What i do have working is WHS2011 doing bare metal backups to a 2TB drive and then backing up the WHS2011 server+client backups to unraid via SMB share every night over the virtual 10gbit ethernet.

 

As far as directory syncing, possibly something like robocopy with a script would do the trick.

Any progress?

 

Looking for an easy way to backup directories identically to unRaid from Windows. I currently use Crashplan but some of the stuff I would like in directory form and accessible. Automated is preferred but not necessarily realtime.

 

Have not come up with a complete solution as of yet.  What i do have working is WHS2011 doing bare metal backups to a 2TB drive and then backing up the WHS2011 server+client backups to unraid via SMB share every night over the virtual 10gbit ethernet.

 

As far as directory syncing, possibly something like robocopy with a script would do the trick.

 

I use Robocopy for directory syncs from my workstations to my servers. I have them set on in task scheduler to run nightly. I also backup my entire workstation(s) to a WHS2011.

 

@ Synx, How did you trick your WHS2011 to back itself up to an unraid share? This is something on my todo list that I have never gotten to.

 

EDIT: I guess I should ask, do you use the WHS Dashboard, or do you use the underlying windows 2008 backup, or do you use a 3rd party solution?

I am using the 2008 baremetal backup, but I have never tested a restore.

@ Synx, How did you trick your WHS2011 to back itself up to an unraid share? This is something on my todo list that I have never gotten to.

 

EDIT: I guess I should ask, do you use the WHS Dashboard, or do you use the underlying windows 2008 backup, or do you use a 3rd party solution?

I am using the 2008 baremetal backup, but I have never tested a restore.

 

I am using WHS Dashboard to backup network clients.  And use the underlying windows 2008 backup to back to mounted samba target on unraid.  When setup it ends up showing up in the dashboard and reports status as normal its just not a option to configure form the dashboard itself.  From what i can tell you will not get any versioning.  If you enable incremental updates you will save some traffic however i dont thing it is the default operation.  This isn't that big of issue to me because both WHS2011 and unRAID are on the 10gigE virtual switch, and i still have versioning of my client backups because its simply copying those over.

 

I tested a baremetal restore from the samba network unRAID and ran into some issues, seems like lots of folks are unable to restore over network shares for some issue.  What they did report was that they were able to transfer the backups to USB drive or similar and do restores from that.  I also have yet to test client baremetal restores but that is on my short list.

 

One issue i just ran into with the WHS2011 dashboard is as of two days ago it shows no status for any of my client nightly backups, its like they just disappeared even though its still on the drive.  I've got a hunch it might have something to do with a full drive backup to CrashPlan that been ongoing for 6 days now.

Ok, that is how mine is set up.

 

Thanks for the USB tip. I'll keep that in mind.

 

for testing the client bare metal. that was one of the first things I did .. (and several times since due to disk failures and upgrades)

If you don't want to blow away a real work station, you can always make a Virtual one. Then you can blow that one up and restore it.

 

One of the biggest issues I have run into with the client restore is that instead of restoring by disk, it restores by partition. If you are are restoring Win7 to a new disk, it is missing the system partitions. you have to either create those manually or start an install of win7 and turn off the pace once you have created the partitions. then when you do the restore, select all the partitions on the drive.

 

It is is a pretty simple task  and the restore is quite fast in the end. it can take from 10 min to 2 hours depending on your hardware, network speed and and disk size (and possibly how many incrementals you have. my dad has daily's for 6 months, it felt like 15-20 min to index it before restore kickoff). A full 120GB SSD over Gigabit is about 20 min. start to desktop.

What are you using to boot the systems into restore?  I was kind of wishing i could PXE boot a single ISO that would able to restore any windows environment (WHS, Server 2008, 7).  Is it the case that you need to boot the install cd for each individual system for the restore to work?

The whs2011 console will create a win pe boot flash for your network clients for restore.

 

 

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Still not happy with my non-complete solution.

 

I decided to test a baremetal restore of the WHS2011 server over the network, it failed while restoring the client backups and then corrupted the entire serverfolder drive.  It was able to boot and them promptly did a server backup to unraid killing the entire serverfolder drive backup as well.  Luck I've got a crashback backup to USB removable that is rebuilding all my client backups right now.

 

I'm also not happy with backing up the serverfolder to the cloud with crashplan.  Nobody really seems to know exactly how de-duping WHS client backs works and I am transferring quite a bit of data to the cloud that I think is unnecessary.  Additionally crashplan keeps crashing the underlying backup server in WHS as it locks up files.

 

I would love to go to a robocopy plan for essential files like photos and documents, but that will not protect file deletes (partial deletes like deleting text from papers) etc.  I really wish there was a native rsync for windows as I do not want to run cygwin.

 

I feel at this point I may have to go with a few different backup plans.  Keep WHS2011 for baremetal incase of complete crash.  Use robocopy for a easy to cloud backup that then gets monitored with crashplan.  And find some rsync like tool to de-dup/hardlink daily, weekly, and monthly backups.

... I really wish there was a native rsync for windows...

DeltaCopy