I work in a small company (less than 10 people), and we are currenly looking for a backup-solution for our main server.

we have outlined the following demands:

 

-we want image backup that can be easily restored in case of multiple disk failures or theft/fire, at least for the boot disk

-we want the backup to be sent both to a local nas or other storage device, and to a storage device out of the house

-we need to be able to easily access the files inside the locally stored images if we need to

-we need to backup about 100-200GBs of data in incremental backup spanning at least 2 weeks

-the part sending the data out of house needs to be reasonably secure

 

until now we have used a backup-company for the out of house part, but there have been a lot of trouble with it since its file backup,

and a lof of files were not backed up due to open files and other issues.also, accessing old files were also painful.

inhouse we have used tape backup, but thats bad as well because it relies on someone changing tapes every day.

since we are small company, we do not have our own IT guy taking care of all this.

 

Is there a simple software solution for this, or at least a simple outline for what could work?

 

I have an 8TB unraid cube server at home with quality mainboard, power and the works which could

be used as destination for the out of house data, If the data is transfered to it by some windows software

on another PC.I ask here because a lot of the users probably deal with this on a daily basis.

thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

 

Have you looked at Acronis?

Have you looked at Acronis?

I second the recommendation for Acronis.  It can do a bare-metal restore from an image on the LAN.

 

Joe L.

Have you looked at Acronis?

 

I've been pretty happy with it too.

Seems to have the ability to backup to an FTP location also.

And new version will allow you to directly create a VM image directly from a backup.  How cool is that!

 

So you can backup your Windows XP computer, convert to a VM, make sure it works, and then install Windows 7, install VMware, and then boot up your old configuration in a VM to use while you're getting Windows 7 all set up and working.  Highly recommended.

Have you looked at Acronis?

 

I have heard of it, but never used it.I will check it out!

 

I have never used Acronis, but have always read good thing about it.

 

If you need something that will do incremental backup on the local LAN and allow offsite then I highly suggest CrashPlan.  They have a Business version that should fit the bill for you.  You can not do restores from CP, but it will version things for you and you can set how long to keep the certain versions.

I program POS systems....for the last couple of years we have used Acronis on every install

 

with all the Restaurants and Grocery stores and such in our area that we service we have done a lot of restores of crashed hard drives during that time

 

I really can't think on one instance where we haven't been able to restore an image

 

and even in the case of a Server getting flooded or zapped and a new Server having to be installed the Universal Restore has been pretty reliable also.....not that it hasn't sometimes needed a gentle bump...lol

I have never used Acronis, but have always read good thing about it.

 

If you need something that will do incremental backup on the local LAN and allow offsite then I highly suggest CrashPlan.  They have a Business version that should fit the bill for you.  You can not do restores from CP, but it will version things for you and you can set how long to keep the certain versions.

 

It seems Acronis is the way to go for the inhouse image backup.I checked out Crashplan as well, and I like the concept of beeing able to back up to other computers over the internet.what I dont like is that they dont

support backing up to a local network drive or a mapped network drive.the mapped drive issue is solved by adding a scheduled bat file that makes the system user mount the network drive at startup, making it possible to backup from a network drive.but still it refuses to backup to a network drive, claiming "the backup engine does not have access to the given location".

 

I thought of a scenario where acronis backed up the server data to an inhouse network drive, and Crashplan, also running from the server, backed up those same image files to another computer on a different location, using an unraid as destination.

I would agree on Acronis. 

 

Here is another program I like

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

 

It's nowhere near as polished but it gets the job done for considerably less $$$.

Weighing in at only 250Kb it's hard to believe it but I've used this product to do bare metal restores to completely different hardware with no problems.

other options: make acronis make a backup to a local nas via smb, and then to a second backup to a remote nas via ftp.

or, make the local nas do a backup to the remote nas? 

we need the incremental backup scheme, where acronis is responsible to delete backups older than specified.

I assume acronis deletes the older files even when backing up to an FTP location?

 

I also see iSCSI support for several nas devices.how is it accessed from a client machine?

does the client machine needs a scsi controller, or is it all software? can iSCSI be used

over internet instead of FTP?

 

and btw, which nas boxes would be recommended for this use?

we would need raid 1, email notifications, secure FTP as a minimum.I have looked at Qnap TS239 pro as

a possible candidate, but a lot of users seem to praise the synologies as well.

 

I work in a small company (less than 10 people), and we are currenly looking for a backup-solution for our main server.

we have outlined the following demands:

 

-we want image backup that can be easily restored in case of multiple disk failures or theft/fire, at least for the boot disk

-we want the backup to be sent both to a local nas or other storage device, and to a storage device out of the house

-we need to be able to easily access the files inside the locally stored images if we need to

-we need to backup about 100-200GBs of data in incremental backup spanning at least 2 weeks

-the part sending the data out of house needs to be reasonably secure

 

until now we have used a backup-company for the out of house part, but there have been a lot of trouble with it since its file backup,

and a lof of files were not backed up due to open files and other issues.also, accessing old files were also painful.

inhouse we have used tape backup, but thats bad as well because it relies on someone changing tapes every day.

since we are small company, we do not have our own IT guy taking care of all this.

 

Is there a simple software solution for this, or at least a simple outline for what could work?

 

I have an 8TB unraid cube server at home with quality mainboard, power and the works which could

be used as destination for the out of house data, If the data is transfered to it by some windows software

on another PC.I ask here because a lot of the users probably deal with this on a daily basis.

thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

 

 

Yulgen: I would suggest using Macrium Reflect for your backup needs. It costs $40.00 a license but can backup machine on the fly. Performing image level backups with the ability to perform single file restores from the image files. Great software I use it for home use as well as business use backing up approx. 50 servers. http://www.macrium.com/

I have been using Acronis True Image for several years and never heard of Macrium Reflect.  Was getting ready to upgrade my Acronis licenses again when I read the previous post and started researching reflect.  After researching the product I am now a convert.

I too have just heard of Macrium Reflect and am very impressed. I was wondering if it can see unraid in the network? or if there is any other way to save backup directly to the server.

I use the free version of Macrium Reflect to image my machines directly to the unRAID server.  Works fine.

I believe the paid version has a lot more capability, but I already use Syncback SE for all of my normal backup needs so I only needed Reflect for the drive imaging capabilities.

 

I've not yet had to restore from a Reflect image, however I've not had any problem mounting any of the images and browsing for files, etc.

You can write your reflect images directly to the UnRaid server. When you have to restore you boot off the recovery CD then browse out to the UnRaid server by IP address and you can restore your image directly from the unRaid server.

 

This is the best "home" protection software one can use for its price ($FREE if you don't need advance features)

You can write your reflect images directly to the UnRaid server. When you have to restore you boot off the recovery CD then browse out to the UnRaid server by IP address and you can restore your image directly from the unRaid server.

 

This is the best "home" protection software one can use for its price ($FREE if you don't need advance features)

 

If you're doing incremental image backups, can you set the maximum number of backups to ensure that you dont fill up the destination?

is so, how is it done? does it create a complete image for each rollover, and then delete the old complete image with its incremental,

files?

Incremental backups are different than image level backups. I don't use File/folder backups in the software just image level so I can't answer that question for you. I have a simple script that goes out and deletes any images after 21 days on the UnRaid server so I know I will have enough room for the upcoming backup.