Is this possible or not!?

The cost of a tape back-up unit is low relative to the cost of creating the data in the first place nor by comparison to the heartache of closing the business because there was no back up that survives a fire or whatever. A commercial concern that values it's data so little is asking for trouble. The stats are that any business that loses its data due to a fire will file for bankruptcy within 12 months of the fire. Get that CapEx application signed without further delay!

Good luck

Although tape backup is an option.  Have you looked into mirroring the data to the NJ office.  This would perform a backup solution for you.

patrickab!
I honestly don't understand your point. Thanks anyway

pratigan!
I have not looked into mirroring data remotely. COuld you provide a little more info or links!? We already have Raid5 and Raid1 implemented on the servers.
Thank you

I take it the 150gigs of information in uncompressed?

You figure if you could see s 2:1 compression on most files you would only be backing up 75gig.  Also, this would be the full backup that is need only once--after that you do incrementals nightly and reduce the amount of data transferred even more.

I don't see why you would have a problem backing up over your VPN as long as your doing mostly incrementals and your compressing the data.

There are many commercial packages that would work great in this situation Veritas and  Arcserve for example.

Brett

Bartender!
Thank you for the reply. I take the backup tape with me every night (as you may have noticed we already have a backup system in place, it completes in approx. 5-6 hrs). The USB HDD is a good idea. Also, regarding remote backup I would only need to backup daily changes (approx. 250MB). I just am not sure how to start it. Is there any program e.g. any Veritas or whatever that allows doing it !?
Thanks again

Veritas Backup Exec does a great job of creating backup jobs. They also have a great wizard and help file to assist with determining what is the best setup for you.

I (being paranoid) would prefer to be taking care of the backup locally, rather than trusting it on a computer somewhere else, but that's just my opinion, not based on any facts out there, if I was in the same situation.

Hope this helps!

:o)

Bartender_1

To answer your question, what you are looking for is
1) incremental backup of remote site.
2) all windows servers

There are two ways you can do it.

1) use a replication solution
VERITAS product - storage replicator.
Replicate remote windows data (servers, professional, etc) to a central site and use your favorite backup tool to back it up. It supports incremental replication and full replication, continuous or scheduled replication.

Legato has similar solution or you can check out a product called DoubleTake. I only have experience with VERITAS Storage Replicator (VSR).

2) use a delta file block level backup solution
VERITAS has a product called Netbackup professional. Essentially it backs up laptops (w2k prof, win98 etc) and do an incremental forever type of backup. Very efficient as it only backup changed block (delta file backup) and store data once only (single instance storage). Works well with DSL or even dialup link.

Problem? It does not support w2k Servers.  However, with registry key changes and knowing a laundary list of limitations, there are ways to use this product to backup w2k servers. Talk to your reseller or VERITAS representative on this.

Legato has a similar product called 'Connected TLM'.

Either 1) or 2) solution you should be able to get a evaluation copy of the product from the vendor to try it out first.

Last but not the least, check out a freeware called 'rsync'.  It works both in windows and unix environment. It basically does what 'storage replicator' does with a few limitations. (such as cannot replicate files that are larger then 2 gig. it used to be a limitation)


Check out the following website for RSYNC.

samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/

-Bruce

I kinda agree with both solutions of a USB Harddrive for a full backup, possibly once a week, and then perform incremental backups directly to a remote site as I had previously stated and as Bruce indicates above...

Bartender!
Thank you for the reply. I take the backup tape with me every night (as you may have noticed we already have a backup system in place, it completes in approx. 5-6 hrs). The USB HDD is a good idea. Also, regarding remote backup I would only need to backup daily changes (approx. 250MB). I just am not sure how to start it. Is there any program e.g. any Veritas or whatever that allows doing it !?
Thanks again

Disregard my repeat. Mistake.

I can think of one slight problem to flaw you plan.

Do you have any idea how long it would take to backup 150gigs of data accross a DSL connection ?

:)

or have i missed somthing

if you look at the previous posts Rob, you'll see that this has been addressed....

What's the status on this question?

hkchilam hit on the answer: delta file backups. We use delta file back ups through the internet. We back up about eight servers nightly in a few of hours, probably 75 gig.

It's important to understand how delta file backups work. The first time you back up a computer a full backup is performed. Subsequent back ups only back up changed data. Changed data is identified at the block level. If/when a file is changed, instead of backing up the entire file, only the blocks that are changed are backed up. By backing up only the changed blocks the size of the backup falls radically, so extremely that you can do things like back up multiple servers through the internet.

It sounds like an differential backup of blocks but it is not. Delta file backups are often backed up to disk not tape. The original full backup and subsequent delta file backups are all stored on the same disk media. Because the delta file methodology includes a sophisticated index/catalog mechamism, if/when you choose to restore a file as of day x, the backup software will will reassemble the blocks for that file as it existed on day X. Some of those blocks may be older blocks that have gone unchanged and some of them may be changed blocks dated up to and including day X.

These methods, backing up and restoring, are blisteringly fast. And, they can be administered remotely. It's great to be able to sit at my desk and restore a document instead of having to walk down to the server room and shove a tape in a tape drive.

So, what do you use as your backup server. If you only have one location you can back up to a dedicated "back up" server. If you have two locations, both with broadband access, you can back them up to co-located, dedicated "back up" servers. You can also back up to a service providers "back up" server. eVault for example provides on-line vaults. (We use eVault.)

Of course, you still want to implement some form of tape backup. For example, you'll want to put a tape backup drive on your "backup" server. In fact, I'd buy two, one as a spare. I mean what good is a tape if the only tape drive in which it works fails. And, they do fail;we probably replace one tape drive a year. (Moving parts break.)

Get a couple of Quantum 220's or 320's. They're expensive, but you've just saved yourself the hassle of buying a tape drive for each of your servers. If you are like us, you've accumulated your servers over the course of a few years your servers have all different types of drives and media. We have a couple of servers with unique tape drives. If those servers tank we'll have the data but we won't be able to restore it using any of our other servers.

Delta file backup methodologies also let you add material to be backed up on the fly. Implementing a backup plan for a particular computer no longer revolves around installing a tape drive. If you decide to back up data on a particular computer, server or workstation, then you just install the agent on the computer and it will back up to the back up server. Voila. This is particularly useful if you like to upgrade equipment somewhat frequently and if you have users that want to keep data on their notebooks for portability purposes.

Prices and offerings vary. We use eVault. eVault markets their offering as a service, but you can buy the software from them. Legato, EMC and Veritas (NetBackup not Backup Exec) are in this market space. I haven't been able to confirm whether or not Brightstor ArcServe will perform delta file backups or if there is another CA product that performs. I'm pretty sure that CommVault is a player in this market. I can name more if you need more. There's a whitepaper on www.infotechadvisor.com that I believe is free to non-members. Let me know if it's not and I'll get you more info.

Mark Manoukian
Director of Information Systems
Kegler, Brown, Hill & Ritter
65 East State Street
18th Floor
Columbus, OH  43215
mmanoukian@keglerbrown.com

CommVault is a very powerful application, and I prefer it to any other on the market thusfar.  Although I have not needed to backup over a WAN or the Internet, CommVault does what they call a Synthetic Full Backup.  All jobs are maintained by SQL, which CommVault uses to record and keep track of.  When a full backup is performed, everything that is backed up is referenced in SQL.  When incremental backups are performed, CommVault checks the database before it backs up a file to see if the file has been modified since the last full backup.  A Synthetic Full backup takes all the data from the last full backup and all the data from all the incrementals and consolidates them into one backup, thus creating a full backup.  By doing so, this dramatically decreases the amount of time needed to perform a full backup.  Since the Synthetic Full backup appears to be a full backup, this job is then labeled the latest full backup.  The next incremental backup will use the Synthetic Full as a reference when backing up modified data.

My configuration consists of a backup server with CommVault and SQL installed, a SAN to backup all data to disk, and an LTO Library for my Auxilliary Copies that copies the data on disk to tape.  The first full, all incrementals for 1 week, and synthetic full backups are on disk, and copies of all the data are on On-Site and Off-Site tapes.

David

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