Could one recommend a good backup soultion?

mwill

Does anyone know of good backup software to use for replication purposes?

We have a server that we want to backup, but only one folder within the volume. This data has to be backed up to a remote server on the network, and preferably without having it compressed. Meaning if our server goes down we have a complete backup right on the spot without having to recover files. We need this backup software having the ability to backup or take snap shot of open files aswell. As most of these files are in use at the time of the backup.

We do have Veritas backup on our server but it takes about 12 hours to do a full backup, we cannot schedule another backup job on this, as our backup would be at least 12 hours old after the first backup it performed so this is not an option.

Any good ones anyone could recommend?

Thanks

TheShadow

Acronis should do what you want. Here is the link directly to the server snapshot product.

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATISWin/

Look on the right side of the page and there are several acrobat files for you to review off line. There is also a flash demo. PC World mag gave it their top award last year.

The rest of their products are off this link

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/choose-trueimage/

mwill

Sadly with this product you have to restore the backed up files.

Any other products your aware about?

Danman32

If both are 2003 servers, you could set up file replication.

TheShadow

Yes I agree. It sounds like what you are really looking for is mirrored servers with a fall over like in SQL Server Datacenter.

sprkymrk

Would a simple xcopy or robocopy work from a batch file?
Specifically the /mir switch or the /mon switch of robocopy may do what you want. In addition you can specify the number of retries in case the file is in use (default is 1 million retries!). There are tons of options with robocopy, type robocopy /? to see them, or check out:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/160513/

You can download it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9d467a69-57ff-4ae7-96ee-b18c4790cffd&displaylang=en

drpower555

how many files in this folder that takes 12 hours? I assume you only back up files that have changed since the last backup? In response to sprkymrk's suggestion, I would say check out xxcopy in comparison to robocopy or xcopy.

http://www.xxcopy.com/xxcopy30.htm

RussS

I use scripts for backup a lot and you can write them to only copy changed data. There is a problem however that you will run across in a live environment is that you will find that open files can not be copied - this is something that can not be worked around.
A workaround could be to have the script run every couple hours and that would sort most things ... except database files that are left open all day. You will find there is a penalty to pay - everything has a cost and in this case would be network traffic and computational cycles.

mwill

Sadly scripting or batches will not work.

I already tried the free method and used for starters, a 127 lines of vbscript to achomplish this task, it worked but sadly not on open files ofcourse.

Then i used robocopy, and it worked well, but after leaving this overnight to do its task every hour, it created weird issues on our server like, halting certain services on our prodcution server.

Even robocopy didnt copy open files, Xcopy would but didnt do it to well.

So I already tested out server free methods with no avil. Time to spend some money! A cluster would be great but i dont think our software which is made by our developers is clusterable.

I found some programs which range from 700-5,000 to do what I need it to do. Just wondering if any of you had a good one also.

Danman32

Are these open files database files, or files that are fairly static, like office files?

To handle open files, perhaps the script can create a backup, and another script (or even same script) a restore. This would take advantage of volume shadow copy feature.

mwill

These are proprietary files that our application uses. Such as a review.dbf file so yes its a database file and its very big. Not just dbf files but also exectuable files that are in use aswell.

They are not wanting to implement shadow copy. I've already looked into this.

Danman32

Without shadow copy, it really can't be done. At least not the open files.
Any open file aware copy/backup solution will do a form of shadow copy, though it may be called snapshot.
Executables wouldn't be a problem, those are static. The DBs would be a problem though.

The only other idea is remote drive mirring solution.

garv221

Failover clustering. Its seperate servers working like mirrored raid.

http://www.isode.com/products/clustering.html

mwill

We already have our servers in place and we are not switching to a different hardware.

They are only running 2003 server standard. I think you have to have datacenter or at least adv server to do failover clustering? I forget this requirement.

blargoe

Clustering requires Enterprise edition or higher, unless you're doing a network load balancing cluster which can use any edition of 2003 I believe.

blargoe

You'd either need

third party software that can handle snapshots
Shadow Copy
Stop the process that has the dbf files open, back them up, and start the process again

AllBread

I vote for zenok online backup. I use it in a company, it will alert you when something goes wrong, it works wel.

Jack2

Also try Microsoft Synctoy and just set it to run as a scheduled task..

genXrcist

Sounds like what you need is near continuous data protection via De-duplication.

You should check out the Tandberg RDX Accuvault appliance. It's around $2K but comes with Accuguard Enterprise which is a source based De-duplication based backup system. With it you can create a data-store on a local server for quick recovery and then have it backup that data source to your remote server for offsite storage. You can have them run simultaneously as well either way would work. Or since the appliance comes with a 1TB drive you could just place the appliance in your remote location and have it deduplicate all the data to its internal drive. This would be the easiest way to do it. Plus you would have snapshots up to the minute max increments that you can setup.

It comes with free Exchange and SQL agents so I would guess if it can run those it will be able to backup your open dbf files but perhaps check with Tandberg first.

The appliance is also an RDX tape dock so it will show up in your Veritas Backup app as a valid tape drive even though it's actually SATA within a Tape cartridge. Comes with 5 server/client licenses as well so you can backup more than just this server with it.

instant000

Run it in virtualization then leverage your SAN to make snapshot copies? wait ... SANs cost $$$ .. Forget what I just said.

cyberguypr

Wow! This thread came back from the dead. I hope the OP found a solution.

TheShadow

Chuckle almost 5 years from the last post. New members often give zombie bites to threads because they don't realize how big Johan's message database is. Not many sites have been around this long with the base intact. Our sysop should be proud and I am sure members are grateful for his dedication.