[152824] in North American Network Operators' Group
RE: Commerical Backup Solutions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Blake Pfankuch)
Thu May 17 21:32:10 2012
From: Blake Pfankuch <blake@pfankuch.me>
To: Josh Baird <joshbaird@gmail.com>, Thomas York <straterra@fuhell.com>
Date: Fri, 18 May 2012 01:31:24 +0000
In-Reply-To: <CABmW_PdpXTxvfL9VkqO9OrC867F53pKwLM8CXmo+ZowZpQj_LA@mail.gmail.com>
Cc: "nanog@nanog.org" <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
First, I work for a managed service provider. We support a large number of=
traditional and over the wire backup solutions. We have used Symantec Bac=
kup Exec, eVault, Acronis, Intronis, Asigra, Heroware (newer solution more =
DR focused) and many more I've purged from my memory.
I have been using BE since it was Veritas starting in about 2003. Backup E=
xec is GREAT if you have a premise Disk server with Tape archive, or even a=
remote over fast WAN. Acronis is nice, but not easy to manage historicall=
y. Intronis get not only a no, but a "hell no please die now". Asigra is =
probably one of my favorites. You spend the cash for it, but it works righ=
t, it integrates with everything, depending on if you get it from a reselle=
r or run your own vault, you get good reporting options and BMR is easy as =
pie. Heroware has great DR and versioning options but its still growing. =
Small datacenter platform, I like it a lot.
Aiming at Asigra a little more there are many vendors that offer over the w=
ire backup using this. Most of them price by the gig, but based on what yo=
u are doing you could probably do a peer replication where you run your own=
"vault" locally to back up to, and then integrate that to one of many prov=
iders to get your off site. Asigra offers decent compression and integrati=
on into Windows and nix tools for open file and such. We have used Asigra =
to backup up anything from nt4 to 2008r2, nix, bsd, as400, esx and esxi. A=
ll the backup stuff is included. You get the base software you get the abi=
lity to back up everything it can, with the exception of Message Level back=
up and restore in Exchange, and file level within SharePoint which require =
another service to be enabled. The UI has its moments of clunky, but it ha=
s gotten WAY better over the past few years. Reporting options are great, =
as is file growth trending. Restores are tricky the first time, but its ju=
st a learning curve like any other app.
As far as BMR restores on above products I've pretty much done them all. W=
e do a lot of SMB work so many times single server, often SBS. I have done=
single DC, Exchange servers, mysql servers, file and print servers and man=
y more. By far the trickiest ones are the Windows Small Business Servers b=
ased solely on the fact they can be complicated to work with as they have W=
indows, AD, Exchange, SQL, RWW and SharePoint on 1 box. If you have ever d=
one a BMR of an SBS server 2000/2003/2008/2011 if everything isn't perfect =
you might as well rebuild. All of these assume you have a well managed bac=
kup solution which is getting all the data needed for a full restore of cou=
rse.
Backup Exec its possible and its not that hard. EVault in theory, but the =
process can be difficult. Acronis does a very nice job of it. Intronis do=
n't bother, spend the time working on a resume because a BMR from this is p=
robably a career changing event. I had to attempt it for one customer, I g=
ot the data I needed gave it the proverbial finger and built a new server t=
o move it onto. =20
Asigra makes it really easy. I have done about 5 (about 18 in our company=
total) SBS full restores. You have to jump through a few hoops, but we fu=
lly restored a failed SBS 2003 server onto a VM while replacement hardware =
came in in 12 hours, including line of business SQL app, Exchange, AD and a=
bout 200gb of data.
Heroware is very similar in theory. It works off a replication technology =
(DoubleTake backend) which does snapshots within the replication. Heroware=
is designed to have an "appliance" per 10-50 servers depending on size and=
load so it might not scale to the size you are looking. =20
Dollars to doughnuts if I had the option, I would do Asigra every time if I=
had the budget from the customer for the offsite. Why? Many of the resel=
lers out there even guarantee they can do a 24 or 48 hour RTO of a full env=
ironment assuming they have the correct backed up date. It just works that=
well. I have done 2 5+ server environments restore the whole thing from b=
ackups with no problems in 24 hours or less onto mismatched hardware as wel=
l. Keep in mind we are working with customers with user counts between 10 =
and 150 in most cases and usually about $1 per gig because they are lower =
size. I've heard rumors of people getting as low as 25 cents a gig, but I =
cant speak to that.
Yes, I resell many of these products at my day job, however I also implemen=
t and support them and work with the various support teams from each vendor=
. I favor Asigra because of personal preference and ease of use. =20
--Blake
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Baird [mailto:joshbaird@gmail.com]=20
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2012 6:01 PM
To: Thomas York
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Subject: Re: Commerical Backup Solutions
We have used Symantec's BackupExec (Veritas) in several locations but have =
standardized on IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). Not a fan of IBM, but =
it works, and it works well. Be prepared to drop some serious coin, though=
. We currently use it to do tape backups for over
800+ servers (Linux, AIX, Windows).
Josh
On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Thomas York <straterra@fuhell.com> wrote:
> We use Barracuda Yosemite backup with about 10 locations all over the=20
> world, using disk to disk (single disks via esata and to SANs) and=20
> disk to tape (both libraries and single drives). Very rarely do we have i=
ssues.
> Barracuda support isn't as good as Yosemite's (Barracuda bought them)=20
> but still not bad. Also, the site wide license is a steal! Get a demo,=20
> it might fit the bill.
>
> --Thomas York
> On May 17, 2012 6:59 PM, "Mike Lyon" <mike.lyon@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We used Acronis and it was a nightmare as was their off-shored=20
>> support model. Never again... Wouldn't touch them with a 10 foot pole.
>>
>> Switched to Iron Mountain LiveVault which backs everything up over=20
>> the wire. It has basic reporting functions but not extremely granular.
>> http://ironmountain.com/services/democenter/livevault/player.html
>>
>> Barracuda also seems to have a nice product. Though, i've never used it:
>> http://www.barracudanetworks.com/ns/products/backup_overview.php
>>
>> -Mike
>>
>> On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Paul Stewart <paul@paulstewart.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Hey folks.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > I'm hoping for some input from operational folks on backup=20
>> > solutions for servers. =A0We are looking for a commercial backup=20
>> > solution with a nice reporting dashboard etc.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > It must support full/incremental backups on Windows and various=20
>> > flavors
>> of
>> > Linux. =A0We would also be looking for bare metal image/recovery abili=
ties.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > To date, we've been fond of Acronis until we got the quote for it ..
>> > Initially we would be looking at 50-80 servers and growing it up=20
>> > from
>> there
>> > to probably 150-200 boxes. =A0Some of these servers are=20
>> > geographically dispersed.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > At the moment we have been using Bacula but it lacks bare metal=20
>> > options
>> and
>> > doesn't have any nice reporting options (Executive Dashboard etc)
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Thanks for any input,
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Paul
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Mike Lyon
>> 408-621-4826
>> mike.lyon@gmail.com
>>
>> http://www.linkedin.com/in/mlyon
>>
