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Backing Up Laptops In a Small Business?
Bithmus writes "I have been tasked with finding a way for our company to handle our laptop backups. We currently have nightly backups of our servers, but no backups of laptops. In our business we develop, implement, and sell another company's software; I guess that makes us a Valued Added Reseller. During development our consultants will create copies of a customer's database on MSDE on their laptops. If a hard drive crashes, all of the work done on that laptop is lost. There are other files that need to be saved, but the databases are really the important items. Ideally these databases would be stored on the SQL servers and the other files stored on the file server, but this is not happening. What do Slashdot readers do to protect data on laptops or computers outside of a local network?"
For a small business? Probably simple file synchronization. Right-click on a network drive and pick "Make Available Offline." You'll still have to train people to store their shtuff on the network, but at least that way they'll have access to it even if they're not on the network.
Of course, you might run into some issues with files being locked and such, but you're probably going to have that anyway unless you go with either a big expensive solution or you just get people to use SQL server databases instead.
However, just because it needs to be said...
The first time that someone loses a million dollars' worth of data or one of your consultant's laptops (with customer data) gets stolen, it will start happening. I don't have much sympathy for this kind of thing. I mean, it's kind of like saying, "Ideally, the money in the bank should be behind the counters with the tellers instead of just laying around in the lobby, but this is not happening." Make it happen. If you can't, at least make your management aware of the risks they're facing so that when something horrible happens, you've got a nice paper trail showing that you're not the scapegoat they're looking for.
If you were a big company, you could probably buy something expensive to mitigate the risk, but it still wouldn't be a good idea. At my big company, we use Connected DataProtector, and I hate it. Once a day, it runs a backup of my laptop and everything on my machine comes to a grinding halt for five to ten minutes. Oh, and it doesn't back up files in use (you know, like MSDE files under development), so a lot of stuff doesn't get backed up anyway.
For years, I have ordered all of my systems with at least two hard drives. For laptops, I order an additional external drive. Currently, I have a very simple protocol: I use OS X and clone the entire hard drive with operating system to a second hard drive with SuperDuper! It is fast, it is easy and if the laptop dies, I can simply boot directly from the backup drive, be back up and running and I don't even have to reinstall applications or set all my preferences. It's like nothing ever happened. By the way, I also use this approach for all my workstations. Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Shirt Pocket software other than being a satisfied customer.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
Maybe you should be worrying about all your customers data floating around random laptops...
Directly put your customers data on big boxes at the office... let people remote desktop in and work. No longer will you have a backup problem for laptops - nor a security problem.
I have found USB external hard drives to be excellent for the purpose of backing up data from either a laptop or desktop. There are also external hard drives sold as one-touch backup solutions as well. Make sure the data is encrypted or the hard drive is physically locked up, because an external hard drive is easy to swipe!
I don't have time to look up the exact syntax for your- but your consultants do log onto the domain back at home from time to time, right? Here's what you need the script to do:
1. Stop the MSDE service, put up a msgbox asking that all other applications be closed.
2. Run a VB Script or some other program of your choosing that copies the files to a location on your network (you can always reconnect old access databases as long as you save the MSDATA directory).
3. When done, restart the MSDE service.
Sure, your consultants will hate it (it'll take a few minutes every time they log on) but it's the only real option.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Some posters already mentioned storing data on a fileserver that's backed up (synchronisation or otherwise). I do have to stress one point about that: Laptops are easy to lose and easily stolen, so whatever touches the disk of said laptop, ENCRYPT IT.
Surely if you are doing any development etc work then you should be storing code/data in CVS or equivalent running on a server.
Remember that source control is not limited to just software. You can use it to store all kinds of stuff (documentation, artwork, video...).
Any business model that depends on critical data in laptops is broken.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I've been using SyncBack for my work laptop.e s.html
http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/sbse-featur
I'm happy with it so far. You can configure whatever folders you need backed up, where, when, and it does intelligent checking for whether it actually needs to create backups of files based on any number of file attributes.
I'm not sure what business you're in, but whenever you start storing customer database on laptops, you've got a potential security risk. I work in Healthcare and whenever a laptop or tape with hundreds of thousands of patient names gets stolen, bad things happen. The hospital involved typically has to send out mailings to everyone potentially impacted, which can get extremely expensive and damage their reputation.
We had a case of a vendor that ended up making other customer data (fortunately not ours) available on the Internet to the point where Google was indexing patient billing records. It was sad in a way, the owner had spent a decade building up his business and overnight the company vanished.
Though this isn't the answer to your question, please be cautious with the data on your laptop. Even if you have no medical customers, odds are you work with data that has privacy implications. Treat it with care.
If you otherwise cannot avoid it, get each laptop user a geek-stick of appropriate size (a couple of GB), format it with an encrypted file system, and make 'em store everything even remotely sensitive on that. The odds are good that no one is going to go out of their way to target and steal a geek-stick at the airport (at least not as much as they'd want your laptop), and you can be reasonably sure that it will survive being dropped, kicked, shoved about in luggage, etc.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I don't know how well it will work with databases, but we've been experimenting with http://www.mozypro.com/. Its cheap, and I think a major company just started to use them for their desktops. It reticulates splines against already saved data, you can govern how much bandwidth/processor it takes up, can run on its own scheduler, its hipaa compliant(448-bit blowfish encryption), cheap and easy to implement. Of course it freezes once in a while.
For laptops, (disclaimer: I'm not in any way affiliated with Dantz, but have had very good success with their products, ever since Retrospect 1.0 on Macintosh System 6 in 1989.) I do recommend Retrospect. It can back up open files, has solid encryption, can back up to almost anything, from hard disks to tapes and network shares, and can back up SQL servers. If you can get a laptop to VPN in, I'm pretty sure, you can get Retrospect to back it up (it used synthetic full backups, so only changes get copied over the network.)
Another idea, if you can configure a VPN, is to put all the MSDE data that the laptop users use on one Windows 2003 machine, and run SQL Server and Terminal Services. Then, you can focus on backups of that machine (Retrospect has a lot of options for keeping SQL Server backed up), and less on worrying about keeping client files copied.
They have a corporate and individual client. The individual offers unlimited backups for $5 per month. The corporate is something like 50 cents per gig, plus $5 per month. The nice part is it's a very intelligent backup client, will run from anywhere, and encrypts the data as you go. (you can use their key or generate your own.)
www.mozy.com
You should check them out. I've been very happy with them.
For a small business? Probably simple file synchronization. Right-click on a network drive and pick "Make Available Offline." You'll still have to train people to store their shtuff on the network, but at least that way they'll have access to it even if they're not on the network.
This is the right idea, but I smell a major WTF at this company. It sounds like the developers aren't using version control. They really just need to set up a repository for each project (SVN is my default recommendation, but something with better support for binary files would be useful here) and just back up the repositories.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I have an XP laptop here, I repartition the basic install to have 15gig (on a 80GB disk) as a root disk with only the base OS on the drive. The remainder was where all my data My Docs etc live. Beyond browsing data and applications nothing lives on the root disk I could have put the User home on the data disk but it's not wise. You could lose the data partition and be screwed. I lose the root partition, worse case I have to reinstall from media.
I just dup the root with regular Windows Backup, Norton Ghost, or what I am actually using now, which is EMC Retrospect. My policy hasn't shifted, just that it Retrospect does Solaris and Linux well too, from a base XP system. Currently I back up the root disk every two weeks in three backup rotation, Data gets done every 4 days. That seems to work well. That backup never amounts to more then 8 gigs to a mounted share. External disks are going to 750gb for about $260 which is a great deal. These days it's faster to plug in a USB2 drive and dump it to that then across a network.
Nice thing about this scheme is that when I went to dual boot this laptop I just had to reparation a non-OS disk rather then risk the OS being mushed.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
If you can't, at least make your management aware of the risks they're facing so that when something horrible happens, you've got a nice paper trail showing that you're not the scapegoat they're looking for.
Parent is 100% bang-on. Years ago, as a well-intentioned, bright (but organizationally naive) systems analyst/engineer, I did not do enough to document systems design risks. This was partly because I was simply too confident in my abilities.
Today, I'm careful to report on certain aspects of system functionality that are key development objectives--and what business risks are tied to those objectives not being met. Sometimes, a business has to make the hard choice of willingly flying by the seat of their pants, but a good consultant or employee is there to make the consequences of all choices clear to the management. It's more than just CYA.
If it's logistically possible, a VPN running over a Verizon, Sprint or AT&T Wireless data service may be what's needed. Perhaps it maintains a real-time connection to the back-end or perhaps it backs up periodically. In any event, it would reduce the "exposure window" of damage, i.e., if this laptop is stolen in the next four hours, I know the data was backed up at least once in the previous four hours.
The cost of wireless data cards and service is plummeting: this may be a good time to consider it.
BackupPC keeps track of a device's ping history. If the device only comes in during the day, after a couple of days the system will start backing it up as soon as it connects to the network.
I use it to back up the LAN, portables, and PCs connecting via VPN -- given that it can back up via RSYNC, SSH and SAMBA, pretty much anything with a HD connected to the network gets put into the system.
The backups are also mirrored for off-site storage so there's always an in-house revision system and an emergency remote restore point. The system works well, and for small businesses can easily store 1.5TB of data on a single 250MB HDD (make sure to mirror).
I use Rsync on an hourly schedule.. with the -e option of rsync.. you can used a shared key to automatically do the the ssh negotiation.. (so your not prompted) works great..
/home/root/rsync_keys/mirror-rsync-key" /home/ root@myserver.com:/home/boldy_going/
cygwin installed for the windows laptops laptops..
the mac laptops already have rsync
you then need to put your rsync command into a script/batch file:
IE:
#!/bin/sh
rsync -avz -e "ssh -i
the second half of this is to do a nightly tar ball of this on the server.. if you want to get fancier with your scripting you could probably save some space with a tarball of only the modified/created files for the day... ----
All the best
-Ian
Here is a quick attempt to address the questions above.
First, File synchronization is the easy way to go. I would avoid using the off-line files feature of Windows xp. I've had lots of problems with it. First of all, if the network connection drops for any reason then the user ends up off-line and can't print. Depending on how savvy your users are this can be a problem. I suggest SyncToy from Microsoft or another third party solution.
On the security side, we have Lenovo Thinkpads. With the embedded security chip we can setup encrypted drives that allow users to store files that cannot be opened without the users password (or fingerprint). This software and hardware comes standard on most of the Thinkpads.
If you are never moderated, do you really exist?
The system works well, and for small businesses can easily store 1.5TB of data on a single 250MB HDD (make sure to mirror).
Really? That's some AMAZING compression. Still, where would you find a 250MB hard drive these days?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
so it's dd with a GUI and you're paying for it...?
First of all, to all you smug pricks who offer comments like "don't keep important data on a laptop" or "your business model is broken" - this ia a real problem for many people. If you don't have a real suggestion then STFU. It should be well understood in a place like Slashdot that not every IT guy gets to set corporate policy. Sometimes you have to work with what you've got.
On the topic of laptop backups, I've been dealing with this issue for years. Here are some thoughts:
For simply backing up a few critical files, consider a USB Flash Drive. I usually write a simple .bat file using xcopy to backup particular files or folders, then create a shortcut with a friendly name for users to double-click on. With a bit of thought you could probably create an autorun.inf file that backs up when the USB stick is inserted. One caution - drive letters may be slightly unpredictable.
For a more thorough backup, clone the entire drive to an external drive. There are many programs that can do this but these days my favourite is Acronis True Image. Acronis could clone on a schedule if you can train users to connect an external drive overnight, for example. It's always nice to have a complete backup including OS, applications and data. Acronis also lets you browse inside a backup image and extract individual files if needed.
What I've always really wanted was a solution that would detect when a server was reachable and backup transparently. I use something just short of this on my own laptop - product called Mirror Folder that I schedule to copy specific folders when I'm connected to my home network every night. This could probably work over a VPN as well. Very simple, very cheap.
If you have a larger budget than me you might be interested in something like Atempo LiveBackup.
Nice to see it survives to this day.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
I just have all my users print out all the data from their hard drives, in binary, onto carbon paper. Daily. The costs may be prohibitive for you. But the peace of mind for me is priceless.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Most likely he hadn't used offline files enough to know. If someone puts a shortcut on their desktop to "their offline files", then they do show like he mentioned. However, as most folks who use Windows know that is only 1 view into them and the standard view accessing them by either mapped drive or \\server\share\folder just like in when connected is more prevalent and works better.
I will say that on XP the offline files feature is not very stable when used with large data sets and does not attempt to do any binary differentials on copies so it is probably not a good solution here, especially since most people would know better than to attempt to use this on a file that is normally locked when the system is up (unless you have SQL set to only be running when you want it running it will try to lock the file all the time and will not survive online/offline transitions and won't sync.
Novell's iFolder is great for laptops that travel in and out of the office. Has an open-source version as well as a commercial--so management can pick their comfort level. Clients run on Windows, Mac (better support coming soon), and Linux. Setup some automated methods of dumping your MSDE data.
Check it out: http://www.novell.com/products/ifolder/
-m
http://www.invisik.com
Unison is an excellent rsync-frontend with a nice gui for synchronization without the "grinding halt"... http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/