Topic: Backup Advice Needed

[TerryF]

TerryF
What backup program
Are we at a total of 3x ext-HDD's here (or have I misunderstood)?

Started with GFI 2009 and now have FBackup

No just two USB HDs one is used for the regular archival backups, one other for the normal daily ones. Could make it safer, and rotate a third or even fourth, but it complicates things and relies on itinerant office ppl to do it. have kept it as simple as possible.

[/quote]

[hawk]

hi mary

the nas drives all come with their own software, which i think is linux, i haven't actually bothered to investigate, just set them up with default settings, created users / folders etc and connected to the network. i have also shunned the raid facility as have had problems and lost data, i started off with all western digital nas boxs but they all crashed, so switched to qnap. 3 years now all are still functioning and have twice had to restore a sme server and all went well. One problem is that if there is a power failure it takes 1/2 to hour (depending on the amount of data) to come back up. the nice thing about the nas it actually is a mini server and just runs.

Just something that might interest others when it comes to external usb devices, either an external hdd or a flash drive. when ever you plug or unplug this device there is a voltage potential difference, and depending on the clothing you are wearing, carpet, long hair etc, create static electricity and blow this device or erase all data. I have many customers coming in crying because they have lost all their data on their flash or external hdd. These devices are a false sense of security. i had one sme server that had an external hdd connected to it and was being used as a backup, there was a bad power surge and the power supply on the sme blew, so did the hdd and external hdd lost every thing, from that experience i never have any backup device connected directly to the server or even in the same room.

Bolting server down. All the sme servers i have, i have custom built and the cases i use have holes in the bottom after removing the plastic feet, or drill the holes before assembling (Drill fillings washed or blown out before assembly). some other protection devices i also use are, a steel welded cage or even kingston locks, (steel cable).

i believe you can never have enough backups and never rely on humans to do it manually. even though i use nas devices i still secretly find a quiet pc on the network where i have installed an extra hdd and make a copy of my sme backup. i often tell my customers that their network is busier at night than it is during the day. each computer is getting a clean, degrag, backup etc then the accounting software gets backed up, then the sme back up runs, then a copy is made, and this must all happen before 6 the next morning. on some sites where i have several sme's it takes from friday night till monday morning to complete all the full backing up. 2tb nas devices are getting full will soon have to look into 3tb devices.

hope this helps
thank
john

[hawk]

another bit of my 5 cents worth,
i have several users that us an ibay to share files, ie a daily changing spread sheet, a user might save over or change this file by mistake, to recover one file from the sme backup can be a bit of a mission, and trust me i have had to do it many times. so i now use my hdd batch file to just make a copy of these ibays on the nas, once a night so it is easy to recover, most of these ibays do not have huge amounts of data just about 20 or 30 files and backup very quickly. easy for recovery.

[Charles2008]

Hawk
Thank you for answering my questions.

i have also shunned the raid facility as have had problems and lost data

Are these then the one-HDD QNAP NAS, or 2 or 4 drives?
Would having a 2-HDD NAS and running on disc1 - incremental backups + a historical regime of full backups + important files and then copying all this periodically to disc-2, have any advantage over any other regime (what is the 'normal' regime)?

Please excuse my ignorance, but what does the following mean:

i now use my hdd batch file to just make a copy of these ibays on the nas

TerryF
Thank you for answering my query.

[hawk]

hi terry

i have ibays where users share data,
for instance the accounting department will share excel spreadsheets. that particular ibay (called workexcel) is only shared with the accounts department users and non of the other network users can get access to that ibay.

even thought the sme will autobackup these ibays when it does it's incremental backup i still make a separate backup of just the data in the ibay.

so inside the batch file i would add the following, for this example the server is (172.1.16.1) and the nas drive (172.1.16.20)
i first map the drives, then do a copy then remove the map, this must all be done from a computer where the user must have access to the sme/ibay and nas

net use v: \\172.1.16.20\workexcel /persistent:yes

net use o: \\172.1.16.1\workexcel\files /persistent:yes

robocopy "o:" v:\workexcel /s

net use v: /d
net use o: /d

because of price i have only been using the 1 hdd qnap. for me less is better, i like to keep things as simple as possible. When i had western digital i tried the 2 and 4 drive models and if there was a problem with one drive they all seemed to give problems. if i have to replace a nas device it is quicker to format and setup a single drive than 2 or 4. i haven't been a fan of raid, years of lost data and a false sense of security, also i found that if i was making a copy from one drive to the other i had overlapping backups,  so for me it is more important that i get a good copy from my sme than have the nas receiving data and trying to move data at the same time. most of the time the nas is located somewhere that is closed and small and temperature and over heating might be an issue, so the less it works the better.

hope this makes sense, if you want any help just shout i will gladly help. Please note this is just the way i have been doing things and might not be the right or correct way, and i am sure there are other sme boffs that do things a bit different that work.

thanks
john

[Charles2008]

John,
Thank you for putting so much detail in your answer - and thank you for you kind offer of help.

Last night, as I searched for more info on NAS, I came across the Sourceforge / AFFA page by  Michael Weinberger:
http://affa.sourceforge.net
What does he prominently display in the bottom RH corner? A QNAP single disc NAS! (just below the 8 disc NAS  ). I never imagined that a "NAS box" could be so versatile.

I also discovered 'backup rotation' is a large topic in itself -  Round Robin, Towers of Hanoi, Grandfather-Father-Son, incremental / differential ...
I examined Daniel May's DAR page - http://dar.linux.free.fr/doc/presentation.html
'Lazy Backup' warranted my closer attention!

Thank you to Mary, Hawk, TerryF and Piran for your suggestions & help.

Perhaps it's now time to 'jump in'.     ... To NAS, or not to NAS, that is the question.
Charles

[piran]

Our SME runs on 3 "low power consumption" Samsungs in RAID5.
They do the job expected. However when the spare capacity
is garnered for adhoc mirroring from a windows 8 workstation
over a Gigabit intranet link it sends the load factor crazy and
quickly reaches 7 - sometimes much more. It's not at all helpful
that due the HDDs' (F4EG HD204UI) very peculiar firmware
issue I've had to turn off write caching on these drives
(hdparm -W0 /dev/sda) despite having run their 'patch'.

The SME has always had its own small NAS box for backups.
Our workstation's backup needs are much more heavy duty.
Have decided to bite the bullet, stop using spare capacity
on the SME for immediate workstation backups, and will
install a bigger NAS specifically for the workstation. Now
waiting on the courier to deliver a Synology DS713+ 2bay
NAS for population with a pair of WD Caviar Black 4TB
in a RAID1 configuration. Should do a better job.

PostEdit: DOES do a better job.
Adhoc tests saw workstation-to-server backups transferring
at about 4 - 10MB/s with resulting load/utilisation factors
rapidly exceeding 7 with very little else running on the server.
Similar adhoc tests (not exactly the same I grant you) saw
workstation-to-NAS backups transferring at somewhere
between 70 - 110MB/s with (obviously) no additional load
factor on the server as it was out of the loop. 110MB/s on
the Gigabit intranet is pretty much 'saturation'. NAS box
also has throttle settings (fortunately). Will now use the
server's remaining HDD capacity for a different type of
back up eg one which does not ramp up its load factor
and leave the saturation bulk back up runs to the NAS.

[Charles2008]

Mary,
Instead of having your suggested 2x USB-disc's rotating and using AFFA to back-up to them, could I use a HDD mounted in a 'hot-swap caddy' in the server, have Affa backup to this and rotate periodically (I have read that SME doesn't support Raid hot-swapping).

So, I am suggesting 3x internal 500GB HDD (Raid1 +1). Then another internal HDD in a (power on/off) 'hot-swap' caddy, that Affa can back up to daily + rotate every 1-2 weeks (ideally weekly).

Perhaps a 'hot-swap caddy' like this with power on/off:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ORICO-1106SS-Trayless-5-25in-Mobile/dp/B0093FINMU/ref=sr_1_4?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1362661641&sr=1-4

It is clear from the above posts that a number of SIMPLE back-up components will comprise a good Backup Strategy.

So my Backup Strategy (optimised for v low user interaction) might look like this:
1) SME-backup (Dar) backing up to a local NAS (daily incremental / weekly full / monthly) - (thanks Hawk and Piran)
2) Affa backing up to HDD in 'hot-swap caddy' - changed every 1 - 2 weeks (turn off caddy / swap HDD / turn on caddy). Spare transported in old video box and kept off-site.
3) Periodic burning to DVD of NAS data (e.g. every 3/12 mths)

I am trying to avoid the USB-drives because:
a) they are vulnerable to being knocked whilst attached.
b) they are vulnerable to being stolen - the server is in a v exposed office location. Lots of visitors.
c) we already have a couple of USB-discs for PC back up and (for some reason) nobody takes them seriously / uses them (this is silly but REAL).

I am planning to use the second server as a workstation for possible immediate deployment as spare server. I have read both you and Purvis recommend this idea.

Is the 'hot-swap caddy' idea workable?
TIA
Charles

[piran]

>> vulnerable to being stolen - the server is in a v exposed office location. Lots of visitors.

So putting caddy-mounted backups *IN* the server
you admit to being exposed to theft cannot be good.

A co-located back up HDD also increases the source server's
load/utilisation factor, this may cause operational issues.

Consider putting a NAS device in a secured room.

[Charles2008]

Piran,
I am hoping to implement 1,2 and 3.
The planned NAS in (1) would be on site, but somewhere inconspicuous and secure.
The theft of the server and data corruption are my two primary concerns. Although any weird, low-probability event could be a major disruption also.

There are also lockable 'hot-swap caddys' like this (however, unfortunately no on/off facility):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/StarTech-5-25in-Trayless-Mobile-3-5in/dp/B000KS8S9W/ref=sr_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1362669230&sr=1-2

increases the source server's load/utilisation factor, this may cause operational issues

What sort of issues?
Do you think that the power on/off 'hot-swap caddy' would work?

Charles

[piran]

1) I've never used SME-backup not even in days of old.
I use DAR2 (not DAR) which does FULL backups daily.
DAR2 currently keeps the last 21 days worth, this will
be increased to 3months soonest. The backup to a
small NAS takes less than a minute. It's probably a
decade or so old, never depowered and harks back
from the days when its NIC was 'fast' at 100Mbps.
Adhoc or when my diary prompts me I manually burn
a DVD for offsite storage - other end of the village.
These are backups for the 'server' all of which runs
headless and unattended in a locked room by itself.
The 'data' eg iBays (our web sites) are done elsewhen
by DAR2 on daily basis also on FULL keeping 21 days.
These take 20mins on a faster (1Gbps NIC) NAS of
more recent age (it's still quite a few years old). SLICE
value of 1920 allows these 3 files to fit a DVDr exactly.
Ditto manual offsite DVDr stuff. All the server's iBay
content is sourced from a massive win8 workstation
which itself has separate back up stuff. Given the
capabilities of this new NAS I expect to keep a 911
copy of both the 'server' backup and the 'data' iBays
backup on it alongside all of the workstation's own
backup of its images to act as a disaster (fire/flood)
exit plan ie everything we need hand-carried out
as it is only the size of shoebox. It's as simple as
even I can manage.

2) AFFA is not specifically 'supported' by Michael, check
the contribs site's wiki history. He does his own thing out
there on the internet. Yes, it still works on SME. I used
to use it as it was simple and worked beautifully. I don't
any more. As for hot-swap caddies they're not to my liking.
I come from days when Linux in general did not support
that sort of connectivity [sic]. It may not do so even
now I don't know. For me the concept of hot-swapping
is a complete anathma. YMMV

3) It's good;-)

Load/utilisation factor issues? What you see running htop.
Once again, you need to get your feet wet. A load factor
of 1 means everything is running sweetly and in real time.
Less than one and you can go out and play - so to speak.
More than one and your server is busy working, coping
perfectly but 'things' are being delayed proportional to
the figure of merit. A load factor or figure of merit of 2
roughly means that roughly everything is taking twice
as long to either get going and/or being completed.
I liken it to the verbal 'pregnant pause'. Load factor
of 7 is downright inconsiderate (to your browsing visitors
who will probably have already decided to vote with
their feet). PITA time is another way of putting it.
Load factors in double figures are a recipe for data
loss... lot's stuff timing out or even corruptions.
Basically to be avoided at all costs.
"Feet wet time".

>> Do you think that the power on/off 'hot-swap caddy' would work?
No (but I may be biased). Do come back and tell us afterwards;~)

[Stefano]

@piran: can you tell us why your posts are limited in width?
thank you

[piran]

>> can you tell us why your posts are limited in width?
Eyesight. I find it very difficult to read long lines.
My very long history includes publishing/typography
where seven to eight words were always deemed
sufficient & effective for proper reading by humans.
Well before the arrival of modern computers...
Call it a quirk if you wish. Like the one where you
miss out the initial capital letters of sentences