Boris Backups!

Conversation started May 25, 2014 at 12:42.

Boris_yo

May 25, 2014 12:42

Hey guys. Is drive image backup possible to network drive?

Journeyman Geek

@Boris_yo: I THINK thats supported by default if your share is smb

Mokubai

@Boris_yo Norton Ghost used to let you do this, I'd assume Clonezilla or similar should be able to

Journeyman Geek

Actually....

What're you backing up with ? ;p

Mokubai

@Boris_yo Using Clonezilla with FreeNAS or Network Share to Backup a Hard Disk

allquixotic

I'll be here less while I'm on vacation. but I'm still happy about my successful flight :D

Boris_yo

May 25, 2014 13:01

@allquixotic 100% success rate!

allquixotic

@Boris_yo not only that, but the airline I'm flying on has never had someone on-board their flight die due to an accident (one died because he was crazy and tried to get into the cockpit, and passengers injured him and he later died)

but this airline has never had a plane crash where a plane went down and people on board died from fire/impact/whatever

Boris_yo

@Mokubai @JourneymanGeek The problem is that it's Windows 7 and 8 computers in office and we want daily scheduled backup.

@allquixotic And no one has been stuck in time and eaten by Langoliers?

AzkerM

Guys!! just a quick question about a cisco switch.. well, I know about networking but I'm novice when its comes to cisco :S

got a cisco SLM2048 switch which gives a headache almost... certain ports connected to the data points doesn't pick the network.. data point to the ETH cable connected to switch has good communication as I've tested it using cable tracer.. most other ports are on the same switch works very well.. but few are not :S

Hennes

Games played on non-newtonian fluid could be fun

Bob

@Boris_yo Solution: store all your data on a central server, and back that up.

Trying to manage backups on a bunch of independent machines is a nightmare.

Hennes

May 25, 2014 13:14

Amen.

Boris_yo

May 25, 2014 13:25

@Bob Independent? Office has 5 machines LAN interconnected. Owner wants their images to be backed up on Sundays to external storage device located upstairs and connected to LAN.

Mokubai

@Bob This. @Boris_yo Our company sets everyones "My Documents" folder to a network location \\server\Users\UserName which presumably gets backed up. All real work/data gets configuration managed by SVN so that server also gets backed up. Basically if anyone looses data on a workstation then it is the fault of the user for not putting it in the right place...

Bob

@Boris_yo The best solution remains: have them all store any data to a central file server. This central file server should have enterprise-level hardware (i.e. very reliable), preferably some form of RAID for any disks, and daily backups.

If you really want to take full system images over the network at the same time only once a week, use any scheduled backup application. But, I warn you: network performance (and "external storage device" performance) will be terrible if they're all writing at the same time. And full images include a lot of cruft you don't really need. And losing up to a week of data is terrible.

Losing a week of data for many businesses could actually put them out of business.

allquixotic

@Mokubai we use "Mortice Kern Systems" (MKS) for our version control, and it sucks -_- I use git in local repos and sometimes quietly push stuff to bitbucket ;D

I try to bribe coworkers into googling for stuff like "hot" or "dicks" to distract the sysadmins while I push to bitbucket

Bob

If you were doing constant (or very often) incremental or differential backups, the network load would be lighter and you won't lose much data if something happens. But then you're basically approximating the central file server solution, only worse.

Mokubai

Basically you should be able to reinstall any workstation that blows up with the correct OS and apps in 1 morning, if all their data is stored remotely then recovering to the state where they can get back to work should take an hour or two at most

Bob

May 25, 2014 13:31

@allquixotic wtf is mks -_-

Mokubai

@allquixotic MKS? Never heard of that one...

Bob

We have CVS and SVN. And I'm privately using git.

Oh, and VSS (Visual Source Safe)

allquixotic

MKS is an awful version control system with a Java-based UI based on an old version of Eclipse

Bob

> Java

> Eclipse

!!no

ChatBot John Cavil

Mokubai

May 25, 2014 13:32

@Bob we ditched VSS and moved to SVN. a couple of our Linux softies privately use Git

@allquixotic That sounds horrifying

Bob

@Mokubai Heh, our old stuff from over two decades ago is on VSS. The newer (one decade) is on CVS. The actually (kinda) new stuff is on SVN.

And here I am using git.

Boris_yo

@Bob Backup needed in image just in case there's hard drive crash or dataloss etc. So if something like this happens, it would only take image restoration and not installation and later setup of Windows again.

Bob

@Boris_yo If you're only taking the image weekly, a crash would still be terrible.

A weekly image is alright for stuff that doesn't change often, but then you need to have daily (at the very least, hourly is better) backups of the actual data.

Boris_yo

May 25, 2014 13:48

@Bob I guess it would be logical to have monthly full image backups because we have centralized network external storage drive but it takes manual job to backup files/folders we work with on a daily basis.

Journeyman Geek

@Boris_yo:I do weekly backups to a file share. IIRC its incremental, and I use a folder per system