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Small-Office Windows Based Backup Software?
Billhead asks: "My boss purchased a Quantum SDLT220 tape backup drive for our few computers in the office, and I have been put in charge of maintaining the backups. The only prior backup experience I have is with my home networks using Python scripts. We don't have any special needs, just encryption and scheduling. Our original backup software isn't compatible with the SDLT220, and other backup software we have tried have been horrible (unable to decrypt backups, memory leaks, unstable network backups). What does the Slashdot community use for small office backups?"
I've been using Legato (now EMC) Networker at a number of different sites for over ten years now. It's easy, reliable, and supports a wide range of hardware. It scales well, but can get quite expensive when you start adding large autoloaders into the mix.
Their site should get you started. They'll set you up with a media kit and 45 day demo licenses if you request one.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
- Will you be doing backups for disaster recovery? Meaning, you won't really worry about keeping data for long periods of time as long as you have a good backup for a month or so?
- Or will you be doing backups for file restoration? Will you be needing to always recover that MS Excel document that Sally from accounting deleted 6 months ago?
Once you have that question answered, search for a backup software that fits your needs. You may look into CommVault, i'm not sure how it's priced for the regular consumer market (we're aSince big hard drives are relatively cheap, rotating external hard drives and using Acronis might do the trick.
Most of the small setups I've done have a RAID for storage and an external HDD for backup. In my experience, most tape drives are slow, cumbersome and expensive. These days, a big external HDD is cheaper and a lot easier to work with on today's OS's. Agreed, this solution may not be what works best with older OS's (we have an old IBM AIX machine here that houses our main software, ick).
:)
Windows-run servers are easy; most external HDD come with backup software. On the last one I did, the external HDD (Seagate, I think) came with the "one touch" feature. I just set the software to backup a specific shared folder (small workgroup, public storage; it's for a small newspaper), and all the lady has to do is bring the drive in, plug it in and push the button.
A *NX solution I used before was to write a simple shell script to mount an external HDD and tar.gz the appropriate directories to it for that day. The script can either be run manually or set up in cron.
But, all-in-all, research and experience is the best tool in finding what works best for your solution. I just don't like tapes.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
I have a group that uses an old disk imaging software set (Ghost Corp 7) to dump client disks to a server every weekend, then they dump the files to tape. If you have access to an imaging software product like Ghost Corp 7 (the Symantec abominations suck), I'd suggest setting up an older server as the backup system (and include the tape drive), then dump the clients and your main server to the backup server. Leave the images on the backup server HDD for fast restores, and use the tapes for offsite backups. This system has worked quite well for a couple of years.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
I used tar and gzip glued together with command line PHP to manage a tape library. Worked fine for years.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
...that someone will always have it's eyes on my screen. So... no need to back, just have to ask somebody what I was writting or reading.
please excuse my apathy
Bacula
2.0.0 has just been released, with pretty much full support for Windows. It doesn't have a pretty GUI, but it should be able to do what you want. It does support VSS so it can back up Exchange and SQL for you, and i'm working on an agent to do proper backups of SQL too, and hope to add Exchange support after that.
We do small business consulting and when a client can't afford backup exec or retrospect(neither of which I like) I just make a old box a ClarkConnect Linux box and run backups via Bacula. CC has a web interface for backups, and similar functionality to backup exec, with clients for storage, and backup clients. I.e. you can run Bacula client on a windows machine and then backup that machine remotely without sharing its files, and you can run a backup file server on your windows machine without it being a smb share. I suppose you could get this functionality with any version of Linux, but I like that the end users have a web interface, should they need it. plus I'm not the worlds best Linux guy, and it is super simple to setup. oh, bacula supports most tape drives, but I've never really tried it with them, external hard drives are way cheaper, and easier to use than tape these days. if you don't have a spare machine around, setup vmware server and just run a virtual linux box. sounds a little odd, but it works great.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
NovaBACKUP (PC World Best Buy; offers tape encryption)
m l?AfID=13778
http://www.novastor.com/
Cleversafe (GPL'd)
http://www.cleversafe.org/
Genie Backup Manager
http://www.genie-soft.com/products/gbm/default.ht
SyncBack (freeware)
http://www.2brightsparks.com/downloads.html
EMC Insignia Retrospect (formerly Dantz Retrospect; PC Magazine Editor's Choice)
http://www.emcinsignia.com/products/
While tar may or may not be available (or useable) under Microsoft Windows, you might want to consider one pitfal when using tapes for backups: if the office burns down and you lose your tape drive, unless you keep a spare drive offsite you now have a box of useless tapes until you can find and purchase a new tape drive that can read them. The advantage of removeable drives in this case is you can plunk them into any PC and get at the data right away.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Tips based on our experience:
Symantec seems scary, due to the number of very serious failures that have been reported over the years, and due to the character of the company:
- Symantec Ghost is not the same software Ghost was previously.
Symantec bought PowerQuest's DeployCenter and relabeled it Ghost, without
making that clear in ads. That showed zero respect for their original Ghost
product; in my experience the disrespect was deserved.
- There seems to be a
social breakdown at Symantec. The company seems to have far too few people
with technical knowledge.
- My experience is that Symantec technical support is
abusive; abusiveness seems to be a major managerial method there. It is
difficult to defend against many small abuses, as both Microsoft and Karl Rove
(Bush's brain) know very well. (Abusers tend to learn by watching each other,
even though they may not know each other.)
Acronis TrueImage is generally accepted as the best backup software for small businesses now. However:- The TrueImage software is not able to make encrypted backups; it can only
password protect, a protection that is easily broken. So, don't allow anyone
to take backup media off site. Store backups in a secure vault on site.
- We have had many, many problems with unreliability of Acronis
software. A scheduled backup may not actually run, for example. Recent
versions have been more reliable.
- The command line interface of TrueImage WorkStation seemed full of bugs
when it was first released. Apparently the release was far too soon.
- Acronis technical support amazes even me. I sent a notice of a failure in
a new version. About 3 months later, I got a nonsense reply from someone who
sounded like she was about 21 years old and only working for Acronis so that
she could find a man, get pregnant, and stay home.
- Acronis sales people seem to believe that anyone with technical knowledge
is socially inferior. My experience is that they seem to think that dirtying
their little brains with technical details is beneath their exalted place in
society. When you ask for help, you may get some action that seems to be part
of internal political maneuvering.
- Acronis recently released an "update" that changed TrueImage installations
to a new product name called TrueImage Home. Apparently this is an attempt to
intimidate customers to pay for the Workstation version which is far more
expensive.
Some ugly history of backup software: Hewlett-Packard's tape backup software would, during restore, make hundreds of zero-length files in random places. The names of the files would be taken from the names of legitimate files on the tape. HP technical support thought that was not a particularly bad problem.In the DOS days, a company called Fifth Generation Systems sold a product called Fastback. The product was excellent until it was sold to a former banker who put his daughter in charge of marketing. (I talked to him for about 45 minutes on the telephone one day.) Since the banker didn't have any technical knowledge, and didn't believe that was important, and since the technical people left when the banker bought the company, the product quickly fell behind, became useless, and disappeared from the marketplace.
http://www.backupexec.com/ version 11 moved totally in the right direction
Especially as it claims to be "The Most Popular Open Source Backup and Recovery Software"
http://amanda.zmanda.com/
I'd be interested to read what any of it's users think of it in comparison to commercial apps.
GrpA.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
Try these:
G4U
http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/
Cobian
http://www.educ.umu.se/~cobian/cobianbackup.htm
Both work well.
Jeff
I am not affiliated with BackupAssist (www.backupassist.com) in any capacity other than a customer and have been thrilled with the product.
Simple and easy to use interface, multitude of options, logging, reporting. One of the features that I find most compelling is that the program is essentially a gui wrapper for the Windows Backup program and thus works perfectly with all the server and professional versions of windows seamlessly.
All too often we must make do with microsoft offerings, Backup Assist makes microsoft backup what it SHOULD have been
DSLIP Web Design and Content Management Australia.
Here are more notes to go with my parent comment:
Disk Image backups are required to back up the operating system drive. Disk Image backups are sector-by-sector backups. Some people call that operating system cloning or disk cloning. There is a free Linux/Unix utility called DD. DD has a Windows version, too. My understanding is that DD has no compression, so that the backups are much larger than with commercial software that compresses the images.
Microsoft has made Windows XP difficult to back up. It is necessary to have 3rd party software that can back up the operating system and also files that are in use. Windows XP will not allow copy, xcopy, or robocopy backups of the system registry for, example. For that you must have drive imaging software like Acronis TrueImage or another.
If a user forgets to close all programs, some important files may still be loaded at night and in use when backups are scheduled. That's why it is necessary to be able to back up files that are in use. Microsoft provides the API to do that, but very limited backup software called NTBackup.
Tip: Encryption is necessary. Backups that are not encrypted are somewhat useless, since it is too risky to take them off site. Remember that password protection is not encryption.
Be careful about backup software that a big company bought from some other company. When that happens, usually the technical people are fired and the company that buys the rights is not prepared technically to respect what the fired people have done. Microsoft bought rights to NTBackup from Veritas. My understanding is that Veritas bought it from Conner and Conner bought it from Arcada.
Recently Symantec bought Veritas. My experience with Symantec is that their software often has huge bugs, and their telephone support is possibly close to the worst.
I found this confused-looking but extensive list of Windows backup software: Backup Software For Windows 2000
We run AMANDA in our small setup. It is fantastic. The scheduler is quite sophisticated & backing up to tar makes disaster recovery easy. Not having to purchase client licenses is also a big plus
I've used Retrospect. It was "O.K.," but the above reasons make AMANDA a better fit.
We have a 5 TB RAID-5 FreeBSD server and a handfull of clients (mostly windows, but a few OS X and Linux boxes). The cygwin clients work well & there are now binaries, so you don't have to compile it yourself (as we did when we set it up a few years ago).
"Problematic" clients (such as laptops which aren't on at night) use rsync+ssh to backup to the server (which is then additionally put on tape).
Amanda provides options to encrypt the network traffic and/or the backups. It has reasonably good indexing & supports tape changers. It even supports RAIT. I have a few gripes, but relatively few of them in comparison to other backup software.