Local Desktop Backups

qwertyiop

My company would like to start backing up the individual Windows desktops to a local storage server and im looking for ideas. I would like to get something does deduplication so that we dont constantly copy over identical files.
I know that my last company used Backuppc on a ubuntu server.

Bokeh

For something simple, might try Cobian backup. I have it deployed in several of my remote offices, and have the backups set for only 5 days. So on day 6, 1st backup gets deleted, and so on. Works real well for us.

ptilsen

I love ShadowProtect for Windows workstation backups. It does a block-level volume backup, so there's no file deduplication because it doesn't backup files. However, with controllable retention on any of the standard backup methods (full, diff, incremental), you can make it work with pretty much any usage habits. The compression is also very good. The big caveat is that there is no good way to deploy the backup jobs themselves to numerous systems; even scripting it requires some dirty hacks and a lot of work. If manually configuring backup jobs is feasible, though, it's a great program.

That being said, I really don't see putting a lot of money into desktop backup software as a good investment. The built-in Windows Backup on Windows 7 can be a great solution with a little bit of scripting -- or, really, without any scripting, depending on your goals and your environment.

What I will advise is that regardless of what system you use, you'll need to be very deliberate about scheduling. Having numerous systems performing backups at the same time will kill the network throughput or the storage system's disk throughput. It doesn't really matter how fast the system is or what software is in use; too many concurrent workstation backups will be more than it can handle. Performance does not scale up cost-wise with size needs, and the more workstations you have, the more likely it is to be a problem, even if you spend the same amount per-workstation on the storage system. That being said, with the right scheduling and/or the right software configuration, workstation backups can be completely viable in any environment.

matt333

robocopy. ive used it before. pretty easy to setup and free. i dont know if this will work for you but maybe worth a google search if your interested.

ptilsen

Robocopy is very useful for copying specific directories, but I wouldn't use it for workstation backup unless you have a limited goal of copying just a specific set of directories. Even then, you're pretty limited to just copying what you have now and overwriting what you backed up. I would really advise using the built-in backup over Robocopy in most situations.

Unless, of course, we are working with XP systems here, in which case Robocopy away.

matt333

yeah its limited, I used to use it at a few clients for to backup outlook and mydocuments on the workstations. i believe you can add a switch to the script and it wont overwrite the backup just add to it. the built-in Windows Backup is what i use now.