LAN Backup - 2013-01-21

last day (15 days later) »

3:01 PM

@tombull89 Salve! You offered to join me?

Hey, just saw the link from your question

Though I'd offer some advice

Don't backup PCs on your LAN. Use Folder Redirection to put every user's my documents folders on a file server. Then, just back that up

Trying to back things up directly from a PC is a waste of time. Centralize resources on servers and just back those up using something like Netbackup or Backupexec or something like that

To echo Mark, that's what we do. You're asking for serious issues if you back every machine up (what happens if the user shuts down their machine at the end of the day?).

All our users have a share on a fileserver which gets mapped to them as U:\ (which is on the E:\ drive of the fileserver) So the E:\ Drive has E:\Users\User1, User2, etc. Then we take a weekly backup every friday and an incremental every evening (everything that has changed).

We use BackUp exec which gets a bit of a bad rap but it does us just fine.

If I do folder redirection, and then users create a new folder, then it gets missed, no?

What about backing up user settings, like for a Thunderbird profile that has pop information?

@MDMarra I want to be able to manage the backup settings from a central location - that is, I want to do everything from my admin workstation.

Any backup software worth the cost can do this

@tombull89 Right now what I am doing is using Cobian Backup to send files to the network server, but that means I have to configure each and every computer.

3:15 PM

And if you do folder redirection, it's all redirected to the file server

Can I do folder redirection on a user profile?

@BGM Ah so you take the files straight from the computer to the server.

I'm not sure what you mean by folder redirection. Do you mean a "join"?

Google "Folder Redirection Group Policy"

It's pretty standard and well documented

You can store user profiles on the server, yes.

3:18 PM

@MDMarra Thanks - I'll take a look right now.

You can use roaming profile and folder redirection in tandem to have all user-specific data on centralized file servers, then you just back them up

@BGM Basically, the user sees their "My documents" as normal, but instead of storing their files on the machine it's stored on the server.

I don't want a backup program on each computer.

@MDMarra - but my users already have a non-roaming profile. I'd have to convert them all or rebuild them. Yuck.

You don't have to roam the profiles

You can just do folder redirection

Depends on what you want out of it

@BGM I forget, are your computers joined to a domain?

3:21 PM

Hi, Tanner! Yes, most of them are.

@MDMarra I am looking now through the search results about the folder redirection via group policy.

There's a comprehensive list of backup software at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backup_software It's down to you what you can afford.

@BGM Ah, perfect. It shouldn't be too hard to use a GPO to force the folder redirection. You might even be able to use a script to copy the relevant data to your server. That way you're not going to each PC manually and changing settings/moving data.

Do any of y'all use folder redirection now?

Most definitely.

For the GPO folder redirection, MS says, "In Group Policy Object Editor, you can use Folder Redirection to redirect certain special folders to network locations. Special folders are those folders, such as My Documents and My Pictures, that are located under Documents and Settings"

But what if I want to work with a folder on the root of C?

3:27 PM

I would move the folders from the root to somewhere else if possible.

Ah, Up to now, I have not used "My Documents" on user machines because that folder gets too easily junked up by various programs. So I've been creating a user folder on the root of C where the only files that would appear there are documents the user actually put there.

Hmm, whatever is junking up these folders sounds like a desktop environment problem on its own.

You could move the folder to a server pretty easily though.

Then provide a link/map the drive (I hate mapped drives, users seem to love them...)

@BGM If you're doing something as non-standard and ridiculous as that, you're going to have a hard time

There's a reason that Microsoft publishes best practices for what data should exist in specific parts of the filesystem

Well, I didn't think it was so ridiculous. Let's see, "My Documents" gets "junked up" with all sorts of folders put there by the various programs. Typically, users don't use those directly, and it complicates the visual searching of the directory.

Microsoft has all sorts of "best practices" that are not practically practices.

I can honestly say that I've never seen anyone make a folder in the root of C for user documents ever

3:35 PM

@BGM What programs are doing this?

So, yeah, you're going to have a hard time with your environment until you straighten that kind of thing out

@BGM Yeah, I know what you mean

It would be nice if application data went in, y'know, appdata, but...

MDmarra: I wish I could say the same. I met plenty of users who though C:` or C:\new folder 5 ` was the easiest place to store documents

I started flogging my users for that. :| They still do it.

Mine were told not to do that.

And after 2 years of that I no longer back up any such data when reimaging

3:38 PM

@Hennes How?

A few weekend of doing all the work again teaches quite well

Windows 7 needs admin rights to make a folder in C:\

It trips UAC

Ah, we have plenty of users that store stuff on their laptops in C:\MY STUFFZ. We tell them not to. They don't take any notice until the disk dies.

Win 7... corp. are not that modern yet

ouch

3:39 PM

Which is another point you do not have to explain to me

Please take this ethic test. Required: IE6 and flash version Y (not sure what Y was, but it was >5 years old)

@r.tanner.f Well, let's see: Adobe pdf, Visual Studio, OneNote, MS Access, Powershell, infopath, etc. - I'm not saying there aren't useful documents there - I'm saying that it confuses Users to have to sift through all of that.

@hennes - I'm not in a position of such authourity!

I wish I was all the time.

We installed one old PC and let one users do the ethics test for most of us

problem solved

Esp. when you write the answers down on a paper

And yes, before anyone comments - I do realise it

Is it possible to do a hardlink?

on NTFS? Yes. See 'junction' and ehmmm... loooks it up

@BGM What requires it to be a hard link? If you placed a shortcut where the folder was, would your users even notice?

3:43 PM

Juction point?

I know mine wouldn't =D

NTFS junction point

An NTFS junction point is a feature of the NTFS file system that provides the ability to create a symbolic link to a directory which then functions as an alias of that directory. This has many benefits over a Windows shell shortcut (.lnk) file, such as allowing access to files within the directory via Windows Explorer, the Command Prompt, etc. Junction points can only link to directories on a local volume; junction points to remote shares are unsupported. [http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896768 Sysinternals Junction documentation] Junction points are a type of NTFS re...

A hardlink (or junction) allows for one document to be in two places at once. If a document or folder was "on" the server as well as the local machine, then I could just back up the server folder.

But that setup would require configuring each machine... not a solution.

Unless the hardlinks could be created from a central location.

But I'm not sure you can hardlink over a network, anyway.

Well, you could set a login script to create the link...

Has anyone here ever done that?

Use hardlinks for network backups, that is?

3:47 PM

Sure, we use login scripts to map drive and printers.

Oh, no, not that.

Nope.

Okay, since folder redirection only works for "special folders" - what other ways are there?

I have heard of a NAS - what about that? That's how I got onto the idea of a network machine to take care of backups.

Look at Synology Diskstation: legionhardware.com/articles_pages/…

@BGM A NAS is basically a box with a load of disks in it. You'd save the files onto that instead of the server (or save the files onto the disk then copy it to the NAS in a form of ways)

@tombull89 You mean, it is just a big hard disk?

@BGM No-ish. It's a box with one or more hard disks in it confgured so it appears as one disk to the system with some form of fault-tolerance in case of disk failure (See: RAID)

3:53 PM

What about some software that could run on the server, be configured from the server, and backup the files to a NAS?

@tombull89 Okay, gotcha on the NAS. I like that.

@BGM We have BackUp Exec. That runs on the server, can be configured on the server, and backs up the files to a DAS (direct attatched storage - plugged straight into the server instead of over the network).

What machine are you using as a server? and do you have a budget?

You're going to have a terrible time trying to back things up from a workstation

It's really not the right way to do it

I have one machine with Windows Server 2003 and another with Windows Server 2008, although the latter is already a bit loaded.

One way or another you should consolidate your users' folders centrally and back up that central location

@MDMarra Well, I hear you, but aside from forcing the users to change their ways, what can I do?

3:56 PM

Really, it's incredibly common. There's no reason for you to reinvent the wheel

Users should not dictate policy

Especially when that policy prevents industry standard things like folder redirection from working

Honestly, it's not like a few shops here and there do folder redirection or network home folders. Everyone does it.

@BGM Sorry, I meant hardware-wise, is it running on a repurposed desktop or a dedicated server?

@BGM They don't need to change their habits. Move the folder to the server and replace the folder with a shortcut.

@tombull89 Both are dedicated servers - Dell PowerEdge.

@r.tanner.f Or a mapped drive... no?

@BGM If you must ;)

I think they're more trouble than they're worth, but it should work fine for you.

For the NAS, has anyone used Synology? legionhardware.com/articles_pages/…

4:02 PM

I've used them in the past - never had any issues.

@MDMarra Honestly, I think I would use the folder redirection thing if it were not tied to special folders only. That "My Document" folder gets too much non-user-created stuff.

Right now, I'm thinking that using a network location with a shortcut or mapped drive is the way to go. Then I can just backup the network location.

Sounds good.

@tombull89 That BackupExec - you run that on the server and tell it what files to fetch?

Yup

You can get an evaluation so it might be worth having a look

I found this, too: http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/
A clever pooling scheme minimizes disk storage and disk I/O. Identical files across multiple backups of the same or different PCs are stored only once resulting in substantial savings in disk storage and disk I/O.
No client-side software is needed. The standard smb protocol is used to extract backup data on WinXX clients. On linux clients, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs is used to backup the data. With version 2.0.0, rsync is also supported on any client that has rsync or rysncd.

4:10 PM

Version 3.2.0 released on July 31st, 2010 - hmm.

Yah, 2010, but it is open-source.

Thing is with open source is that it's not always easy to get support for it.

However, it's free. Give it a go.

It was mentioned by Oliver Salzberg here: serverfault.com/questions/213368/…

Sorry about the response on the main site - shopping questions (loosely define) get closed quite quick. I hope you find what you're looking for anyway.

@tombull89 Thank you for your time! At least now I have a few ideas.

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Jan '1321

LAN Backup

Ideas on how to backup an entire LAN to a network machine

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