Easy backing up linux and windows machines

DevilWAH

Can any one suggest a simple / cheap produce to back up about 12 servers, a mixture of linux red-hat and windows 2003/8.

Must be able to back up live servers.

Back up the complete server to allow bare mettle restores if needed.

Simple to manage for non Linux engineers.

Back up to remote storage.

Support Windows and Linux server

And like I say cheap.

Any ideas are welcome

demonfurbie

are they vms or real boxes

ptilsen

Same solution for both platforms? If so, the VM vs physical question becomes even more applicable.

For Windows, I've really grown to like ShadowProtect quite a bit, but it is only cheap in certain licensing situations.

DevilWAH

demonfurbie wrote: »

are they vms or real boxes

boxes.. Sorry thought i put that in

if it can do both than thats even better. WE are about 80% Virtual its mainly the few physicals ones this is needed for.

DevilWAH

ptilsen wrote: »

Same solution for both platforms? If so, the VM vs physical question becomes even more applicable.

For Windows, I've really grown to like ShadowProtect quite a bit, but it is only cheap in certain licensing situations.

A few people have said shadow protect to me. trying to work out what kind of cost it would be for 12 - 15 servers, oh and of course its not linux

ptilsen

I would say "cheap" needs to be explicitly defined. Whats your budget?

Built-in Windows Backup will work well enough through GUI and/or GPO + scripting for 2008/R2, but NT Backup on 2003 is really not recommended, particularly for bare metal recovery.

Edit: ShadowProtect would cost $12000 to $15000 USD for 12-15 server. Not sure about UK pricing. If you work for an MSP and these are clients' servers, you can get more favorable pricing. For your own IT on physical boxes, all you can get is three-packs or one-packs.

DevilWAH

ptilsen wrote: »

I would say "cheap" needs to be explicitly defined. Whats your budget?

Built-in Windows Backup will work well enough through GUI and/or GPO + scripting for 2008/R2, but NT Backup on 2003 is really not recommended, particularly for bare metal recovery.

well that's the million dollar currently the solution we use costs nothing (and is very labor intensive), Im not looking to the likes net backup and backup exec as while I do like these products for the number of servers we have and the fact that in the long term we are aiming to go fully Virtual. This is a stop gap solution for the next 12 to 24 months.

So a simple no frills solutions that will take a full back up and allow easy bare mettle restores. WE dont want to pay for a solution that does things that we will never use.

I am looking for a solution that will manage linux as well as windows, as these are what the ops team have most issues with.

demonfurbie

if its vms couldnt you just make daily snapshots and/or make a copy of the vm and back it up that way

SharePoint, SQL Server, SAP-BPC With a Little Spice Added: Copying VM While Running

DevilWAH

in fact what products are there around that can manage mutiple Linux servers. May be I need to start by finding some solutions that can back up Linux physical machines on a seceadul and for bare metal restores.

As I said the VM side and windows boxes are am not really concerned about as have plenty of experience with backing these up with the likes of netbackup and backup exec (netback up certified once upon a time) . Its the physical linux boxes that I want to bring in to the picture.

We currently take them down to take disk images (yes i know not good), so want an automated solution to manage them untill they are moved to VM

RTmarc

You said you have experience with using NetBackup and Backup Exec for your VMs and Windows machines, why not include the physical Linux machines in that routine? Both solutions are capable of doing bare-metal restores and work on most OSes you can throw at them. If you already have one of these solutions in-house, you're talking about adding licenses to what you already have. That should be the cheapest route.

DevilWAH

No we dont have any solution at the moment, we are looking at a VMware solution but that is only for VM machines.

I would love to go backup exec but looking if there is some thing cheaper as considering its for the legecy servers it a bit OTT.

joehalford01

We use acronis on our windows machine, it's supposed to be linux compatible but our vendor that runs the back-ups for us can't figure it out (or won't). I havn't had a chance to check it out myself. There are some built in command line tools for backing up linux as well. We just back-up the volume groups on our Unix server to tape. Seems effective enough.

ptilsen

DevilWAH wrote: »

I would love to go backup exec

I don't see that every day. I, for one, dislike BackupExec quite a bit.

I'm not aware of any especially good, cheap, backup suites that support both physical *NIX and Windows. I still love ShadowProtect, but it's really pretty expensive to do it for a handful of physical servers.

onesaint

Have you considered solutions like Bacula, Clonzilla, or Ghost? On the NBU/BE front, check out Amanda.

DevilWAH

onesaint wrote: »

Have you considered solutions like Bacula, Clonzilla, or Ghost? On the NBU/BE front, check out Amanda.

Can these do live servers with out taking them of line? the ghost version we use requires booting to live cd to do the imaging.

onesaint

Amanda enterprise can, you'll have to dig regarding the open source side -
For Windows, "Backup of open files (Volume Shadow Services must be enabled)."
http://wiki.zmanda.com/index.php/Zmanda_Windows_Client
Comparison of Amanda Community and Enterprise Editions


I've read that Bacula can as well, but haven't used it myself. And the enterprise version will have more features, as expected.
Again, it uses Windows VSS.
application_specific_backups:exchange_server [Bacula DokuWiki]
And LVM snapshots:
application_specific_backups [Bacula DokuWiki]


Ghostcasting (your version of Ghost should be able to do this) will shutdown a server remotely and run the backup. Clonezilla is the same way.

it_consultant

DevilWAH wrote: »

well that's the million dollar currently the solution we use costs nothing (and is very labor intensive), Im not looking to the likes net backup and backup exec as while I do like these products for the number of servers we have and the fact that in the long term we are aiming to go fully Virtual. This is a stop gap solution for the next 12 to 24 months.

So a simple no frills solutions that will take a full back up and allow easy bare mettle restores. WE dont want to pay for a solution that does things that we will never use.

I am looking for a solution that will manage linux as well as windows, as these are what the ops team have most issues with.

Backup exec. We are going full virtual and backup exec is fully compatible with VMWARE / HyperV / whatever. I have tested it (we are doing the same thing but we selected Commvault) and it is wayyyyy better backing up virtuals with Backup exec than the built in WMARE client, VEEAM, etc.

DevilWAH

How do you rate comm-vault agisnt backup exec? as from what I remember commvault was a cheaper option but not as well polished. but that was a few years bck now

it_consultant

DevilWAH wrote: »

How do you rate comm-vault agisnt backup exec? as from what I remember commvault was a cheaper option but not as well polished. but that was a few years bck now

We went with commvault because it is OEM'd for our SAN (Hitachi) so we get it on the cheap. BE made a great play for our business, I kind of miss their interface.

drkat

StorageExec possibly? Symantec makes a few nice products

DevilWAH

Amanda Network Backup: Open Source Backup for Linux, Windows, UNIX and OS X

Any one use this?

I was thinking of it for backing up full file system on Linux boxes?

Cheers

jibbajabba

I am using Acronis for both Windows and Linux. Tricky bit with Linux is the Kernel, when you upgrade the kernel, a component called SNAPAPI needs to be reinstalled and sometimes you need to get in contact with them to get an upgraded SNAPAPI. But it works just fine.

emerald_octane

Retrospect is very cheap for desktops (unlimited clients, single server) but I don't know how much it is for servers. Come to think of it, I don't think it would know the different between a linux server and client so you might be good there.

Puffy

Hmm, I used the builtin dd command to backup and virtualize(vboxmanage) a live centos system a year ago. The dd command is pretty neat.

onesaint

+1 for dd or rsync. They are the builtins of choice.

DevilWAH

From what I read Rsync has issue grabbing the boot loader and partition info Meaning its harder to restore. While DD has issue copying a mounted file system (such as the OS partition, so does not give you a consistence backup.