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Microsoft Releases Public Beta of Data Protection
Torrey Clark writes "Microsoft has released the public beta of its disk-to-disk backup product, Data Protection Manager. The product is designed to make backups easier than simply backing up to tape. Disk-to-disk backup completes images in significantly less time, meaning much less downtime for systems during backups."
We've been doing disk-to-disk for a year or so now using rsync's --link-dest feature to create apparently complete mirrors each night, but with only those changed files actually occupying disk space (beyond that of a symlink). Makes restoration an absolute breeze compared to tape, but I'm not sure if this M/S effort does the same? *runs off to look*
What's wrong with:
o
m /e valuation/faq.mspx
dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/mnt/hdh1/path/to/desired/backup/image/here.is
Oh, not available for Windows, so you'll have to buy a product instead. But isn't dd much easier than using a program that expires after 270 days.
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/dp
Q. When does the DPM beta expire?
A. The Data Protection Manager software expires 270 days after installation.
Someone criticized the "downtime" thing. Frankly, in order to get a good backup, any other processes running on data should not be in flux or the backup itself could be corrupt. So even in most conventional backup schemes, there is a period of time in which backups run and nothing else does.
Another point is that I do not see where it will support operating systems other that Windows. This is to be expected, but a mature solution should be capable of backing up multiple operating systems as many sites I have seen have a heterogenus computing environment. At my site there are Windows servers but there are also Novell, Linux and SunOS. Is there a solution for those too?
On the other hand, if we're talking about what essentially amounts to "dd" I am sure there could be a handy Knoppix CD created to suit the task in some automated way. It could actually be quite simple in that at a certain time of day (night?) power to a bootable external CD drive is enabled, the system is scheduled to reboot at the same time, it boots from CD, runs "dd" per the scripting in the custom Knoppix where it finishes the job by writing out information to a log file about success or failure and then reboots the computer again. That's just off the top of my head but I am sure that even more elegant schemes could be cooked up. This solution would be effective at creating viable images at a good speed and could even utilize compression along the way.
If Microsoft wants to make a "ghost" backup, then maybe they should just license the technology from Symantec.
Thank you...you show me the hard drive that holds as much as my tape drive does, then we'll talk. And I certainly don't have room in the drive tower for another 7 drives.
Disk to disk backup would require the system to be shutdown, drive added, removed and reboot, configure etc.
Unless they are talking about removable media like CD/DVD/USB devices, this does not make sense.
There are such things as USB hard drives which appear as volumes within the Windows OS, you know. I use such a unit with a cheapo exchangeable ATAPI cartridge bay hacked into it for backup. I call it "tepid-swap"; it's not true hotswap as I have to "stop" the USB device before switching it off but I certainly don't have to shut down the entire system to change the drive fitted in the bay. After I power it up again Windows 2000 automatically recognises the new disk, no reboot necessary.
Disk-to-disk backup? In fact, I (ie. my computer!) do it every night. Simple copy command? I think that does not cut it. I'm in a tight development cycle and each day write a lot of code, documents and receieve/generate lots of data files. I need to back up all important data but surely I don't need to make backup of the executable files, temp files, OS system files and such. The solution that I use is simple: I have two hard disks in my computer. The files that I need to have back-up from, are scattered on these two drives. Now, I have made a BackUP directory on each one of these drives and put a copy of all important files in them. So, I have 3 copies of every important files: the original, and two back-ups. In case a hard-disk goes banana, I always have a copy of all important files on the other one. I run the back-up every night. Just need to copy the files that has been changed or the whole new directories made during the day. So the problem is: I need two desinations for each source. I need to be able to select which directories or even which files to back-up (or not to backup) and I need to check which files have been changed or which new files (or directories) have been created. I need to be able to schedule the back ups for midnight and I need to forget about all these details in practice as I have to focus on my work :)
How I did it? Well, I tried a script in the beginning but found it difficult to manage over the time and it was very tedius. Now I use SyncBack which is a freeware program with all these features that I need (and more! like FTP and compression to Zip, etc.). QED.