Need Advice - Best way to Automatically Back Up Computers?

[Joker12]

Hello

I operate a small online company (about 10 computers).

What would you guys recommend as a good source of automatically backing up my files?

I have looked into a few methods:

-Cloud back ups
-External HDs back ups
-Server back up.

I would like to avoid the server since that can be very expensive.

Can anyone offer some concrete advice on cloud/external HD back up?

Thank you!

[Gee]

How vital is the data? Do you trust it in the cloud?

How much data are we looking at?

Is the data centralized or on the 10 indivudual machines?

[Joker12]

How vital is the data? Do you trust it in the cloud?

How much data are we looking at?

Is the data centralized or on the 10 indivudual machines?


How vital is the data? Do you trust it in the cloud?
it is fairly important, mainly the email/outlook file that contains all the emails from clients.

How much data are we looking at?
Anywhere from 25-75gig per PC

Is the data centralized or on the 10 indivudual machines?
It is on 10 individual machines.

[Gee]

How vital is the data? Do you trust it in the cloud?
it is fairly important, mainly the email/outlook file that contains all the emails from clients.

How much data are we looking at?
Anywhere from 25-75gig per PC

Is the data centralized or on the 10 indivudual machines?
It is on 10 individual machines.

I have always prefered owning my data and not leaving it in the hands of cloud services

If the majority of the data is email, you need to examine where the data currently resides. Who is hosting your email? If you use a service like google, it is relatively easy to setup IMAP and your email is already in the cloud. If you are using a web host then you can do the same thing.

Because there are 10 individual PCs, you should try to consolidate all the data into a server. It would be relative easy for a disgruntal employee to wipe out their machine and you can potentially lose a lot of valuable data.

[deep]

It would be relatively easy to either have one machine on your network act as a backup for all of them or have certain PCs take care of each others' PST files....use a one of a thousand free backup software packages for Windows that allow you to schedule backups at off hours. Or for a couple of hundred dollars, you could add a small NAS to the office for that same purpose.

[Joker12]

Thanks for the reply.

I have looked into server prices and some go for over $2,000.

I heard hooking up an external harddrive to a spare computer would work the same way - Not sure if this is true.

you could add a small NAS to the office for that same purpose.

Can anyone recommend a reliable NAS? Thanks!

edit: Just did a quick search on Canada Computers.

http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_1035_357&item_id=027770

Would something like this be viable?

[BenK]

Thanks for the reply.

I have looked into server prices and some go for over $2,000.

I heard hooking up an external harddrive to a spare computer would work the same way - Not sure if this is true.

you could add a small NAS to the office for that same purpose.

Can anyone recommend a reliable NAS? Thanks!

Why do you need to backup the files (or better phrased as "what are you afraid of happening")?

Setting up your own backup server for very basic backup duties is fairly easy and inexpensive. Essentially, you could take any old PC and throw in a couple large HDD in there and it'll back things up automatically. To give you a quick overview, read: http://lifehacker.com/5919558/turn-an-old-computer-into-a-networked-backup-streaming-or-torrenting-machine-with-ubuntu

[death_hawk]

75GB per machine x 10 machines = 750GB which pretty much rules out the cloud.
Then again... it's not 75GB of unique data every day. Changes shouldn't be that much.


Keep in mind that this is a BACKUP.
If your backup is stored at the same site as your originals, anything that happens on site could damage the backups.

ALWAYS keep your backups offsite, preferably in a geographically unique location.

[deep]

ALWAYS keep your backups offsite, preferably in a geographically unique location.
I would re-phrase that as "always keep at least ONE backup offsite". It's wise to have a copy onsite as well, for the fastest possible reaction time to a minor issue.

...and I'm not sure what you mean by "geographically unique", I think you likely mean "a decent distance from your office". Or maybe you're looking for something with a waterfall, or a cool looking mountain ;)

[death_hawk]

I would re-phrase that as "always keep at least ONE backup offsite". It's wise to have a copy onsite as well, for the fastest possible reaction time to a minor issue.

...and I'm not sure what you mean by "geographically unique", I think you likely mean "a decent distance from your office". Or maybe you're looking for something with a waterfall, or a cool looking mountain ;)

Yeah that's what I meant.
Onsite backups are nice too so if (when) something goes wrong you don't have to ship a HDD across the country.

"Geographically Unique" is somewhere not close.
Let's say that you're in Vancouver and it all of a sudden decides to fall into the ocean.

Your backup that lives in Toronto wouldn't be affected by this.

[wilsonlam97]

Hire a IT guy and spend money on a server.

It would make work a lot more efficient since you don't have to wait for stuff to load over the internet. All speed is determined by hardware and not bottlenecked with ISPs on a local server. Have a VPN to access data out of the office.

[JamesA1]

Are your Outlook files really 75 Gbytes per computer? Because that's a heck of a lot of email.

In any case, you don't need to spend a lot of money on a server. Any one of your computers can back up the files from all of the computers on your network, preferably during the night. What you need is a program to do automatic scheduled backups. There are many available. We use Acronis True Image.

If your data is really important, you will want to have redundant backups. We swap backup drives back and forth regularly so that we don't have a single point of failure. One aspect of Murphy's law is that your backup won't work the one time you need it, so test it regularly.

We also back up all our email to Gmail by using an auto-forward function so that we have free cloud backup (warning: not secure if your email is very private). And we take a full backup disk and store it off-site regularly in case a catastrophe like a fire destroys everything at the site.

[xalex0]

You don't need to buy a special server computer. Just take a regular desktop machine, add a few hard drives and install freenas or the like. Then you can perform backups with rsync/unison/whatnot. Additionally, you might want to store user data on a central fileserver, rather than spread it over several machines.

[0xffff]

Recommendations:

1) Move off Outlook / POP3 to an online hosted mail service (e.g. Google Apps). No you longer have to worry about backing up Outlook. It's a yearly fee per account, but considering you're getting backup, high availability and integrated smart phone / web access to your mail, it's worth it. And many of the services will sync to Outlook so you can continue using it as a client.

2) If you have other data that needs to be backed up, get or build a NAS device. I like Synology (DS211 / DS411). You can also build your own with a regular desktop machine (doesn't have to be new, a crappy old P4 Celeron is more than enough). Either keep your files there, or schedule a nightly 'sync' from each computer to the NAS device. There are free tools for Windows that you can do this with.

3) Make sure you have an offsite backup of the NAS device. For example an external hard drive. Once a week (or month, or whatever schedule works for you), bring in that external hard drive, hook it up to your NAS device and dump a copy of your files to the external drive. Wash, rinse, repeat.

[coolspot]

Hello

I operate a small online company (about 10 computers).

What would you guys recommend as a good source of automatically backing up my files?



Windows 7 Backup works very well.

Get a Synology NAS as the backup device - works very well. The Synology DS411 is a good choice, it can have upto 16TB of storage (4 x 4TB), or about 12TB of RAID 5 storage. You can set it up to RSYNC to a remote Synology NAS automatically, or you can run a backup onto a hard drive and fedex it to a remote location weekly.

Synology NASes are very easy to use and have a great GUI: http://www.synology.com/dsm/index.php?lang=us

[rocking23nf]

are you running exchange for your email? do you need the ability to restore individual emails from your backup? I use backupexec 2010. Its very simple to use.

A backup to portable hard drive is not a good solution, they fail, i have replaced 2 in the last year out of my pool of 5.

The best bet is a backup to attached storage on a dedicated machine, which then duplicates to tape, and is stored in a fireproof safe/off site.

However this will cost a bit of money, but whats 10 grand compared to a complete loss of business?


Pros
backup nightly, and individual files and emails.
Tapes can be stored for years and years.
Tapes can hold 1.6TB of compressed data on a LTO4 tape.
Its fully automated besides switching tapes (you can get a 8 or 16 tape loader or even bigger)
Restoring from attached storage is superfast.
Duplicating attached storage to the tape drive doesnt bog down your network.


Cons
Price.


FYI
I paid 2200$ for 50 LTO tapes with labels.
6100$ for a LTO4 with dual tray slot - 16 tapes total capacity.
2000$ for my physical server (pro warranty included)
Just build your server with 6 internal 2TB drives, and your laughing.

[JamesA1]

The problem with tape is that it's slow to access and unreliable compared to a hard drive. We just rotate our backups between a pool of hard drives, and once every few months we retire one permanently to off-site backup. It costs less than $100, so it's cheaper than tape.

But really all these methods can work, depending on how much time and money you want to spend, and how many layers of backup you need to feel comfortable. Having a backup at all puts you one step ahead of most people. Having double backup plus off-site backup, and testing your backup once in a while puts you several steps ahead.

[geek12]

Try Handy Backup 7 (http://www.handybackup.net), it can do server, cloud, external hdds backup.