Backup software

have to say have upwards of 100Tbytes with our current solution so cloud based storage is not sutible. Backup side of things are OK, but recover can be an issue.

jmritenour

EMC's Avamar. I have some gripes about it, but overall, it's okay. And it supports nearly every OS in existence, and the de-dupe is pretty good.

Edit to add - Backup Exec is without question my preferred backup software, but the licensing fees are just too much most of the time. I know we didn't give it more than a glance, it wasn't anywhere near any of the other solutions we reviewed.

Roguetadhg

DevilWAH wrote: »

Like to see a bare mettle restore from that

I only backup the documents for work, drag and drop. I back everything up to a flash drive. It's not fancy, but does what I need it to - backup!

e:
rmdir Backup-01-Mon /s/q
md Backup-01-Mon
cd Backup-01-Mon

md Excel
cd Excel
xcopy "D:\~\Excel" /e
cd..

I don't need anything beyond a week's worth, so it works for me!

The company uses Bacula.

X10MMX

DevilWAH wrote: »

have to say have upwards of 100Tbytes with our current solution so cloud based storage is not sutible. Backup side of things are OK, but recover can be an issue.

So far the most I have needed to do is a file level restore.. Not had to do anything major... But yea you're right if you have a lot to keep in the cloud it can become very expensive.

DevilWAH

I looked at Bacula, however non of the OPS team have my experience with systems like that, and I want a nice user friendly interface so they can handle the day to day operations of it.

And I have lots of experience with Backup EXEC but like has been said its very costly, but its kind of the bench mark I measure others against.

not looked at EMC's Avamar so cheers for that. Does it support bare mettle restore on LINUX?

it_consultant

With that amount of data you are in CommVault territory.

CodeBlox

They use EMC Networker here where I work.

Coolhandluke

We used backup exec with tapes for all servers but as most people have said, its costly. Have moved most things to SANs now with windows server 2008 backup and backup exec (tape+SAN) backup only for critical servers.

jmritenour

DevilWAH wrote: »

not looked at EMC's Avamar so cheers for that. Does it support bare mettle restore on LINUX?

While it doesn't have a boot from CD BMR like Windows does, you can do what is essentially a BMR by booting into recovery mode, mounting the file system you want to restore, and running a stripped down version of the Avamar daemon. I've only tested this a couple of times, but it seems to have done the job as intended.

blargoe

Not enough info to repsond... Depends on what you are backing up, how many people you have administering it, and what your recovery requirement are.

KenC

Roguetadhg wrote: »

I only backup the documents for work, drag and drop. I back everything up to a flash drive. It's not fancy, but does what I need it to - backup!
...
I don't need anything beyond a week's worth, so it works for me!

But it's encrypted in some way when you transfer it onto the flash drive, right? I sure hope so.

@OP - what would you say your split of data is in terms of data (files etc.) and system images?

NightShade1

Try acronis

DevilWAH

blargoe wrote: »

Not enough info to repsond... Depends on what you are backing up, how many people you have administering it, and what your recovery requirement are.

As I said in various post

linux (about 5 different distributions), netapp, nexsan, windows, exchange, oracel, SQL.....
100+ tbytes
baremetal restore of Linux (I will assume any enterprise solution will support windows BMR if it can do Linux)
No dedicated Backup engineer, experienced Linux/windows guy to set it up and general help-desk/ops staff to manage it day to day.
and this is to provided data recover, not for high availibility or version tracking.

ARCservr I know will do BMR for Linux and Windows in the new year, But is an unknown to me
Comvault, when i used it 3 or so years ago seemed a very clunky bit of software
Backup exec is be far the slickest GUI, but the cost is a big issue unless the functionality is very supiriour to others.

Netback up is a bit of an over kill because we are only looking at about 60 physical servers + a VMware estate

DevilWAH

IT seems other is a Favorite choice, what other main stream enterprise solutions are around. This is government network so any solution has to have a good proven track record.

it_consultant

Don't judge CommVault by its interface. You actually have to RTFM to make it work right. Having said that, once you learn it, it works great. With 100TB of data, you are going to want to have a 3 tier storage and archive policy to keep your storage efficient. They probably have a SAN plugin for your particular SAN so CV can leverage whatever snapping technology is available on you SAN as a backup technique.

We have Linux, Windows, Exchange, SQL, and we archive email and file systems. We also backup a NAS with the NDMP plugin. We have about 25 TB of front end backup space and 25TB of archive. Our live production is about 100TB, so you can see that our dedupe ratio is about 50%.

DevilWAH

it_consultant wrote: »

Don't judge CommVault by its interface. You actually have to RTFM to make it work right. Having said that, once you learn it, it works great. With 100TB of data, you are going to want to have a 3 tier storage and archive policy to keep your storage efficient. They probably have a SAN plugin for your particular SAN so CV can leverage whatever snapping technology is available on you SAN as a backup technique.

We have Linux, Windows, Exchange, SQL, and we archive email and file systems. We also backup a NAS with the NDMP plugin. We have about 25 TB of front end backup space and 25TB of archive. Our live production is about 100TB, so you can see that our dedupe ratio is about 50%.

I use to run a netbackup 5.1 insulation, it was a great bit of kit but every one hated it because it you needed to be a netbackup admin to do any thing with it. things like changing a tape drive, while in the manual it tells you how to do it via a GUI. you actuly had to go behind the scenes to edit config files casue the GUI did not work. And this was the same with comvault. it didn't logicaly follow and was not consistent This is fine if you have two or three backup engineers that look after both the configuring and monitoring. But if you want to hand over the monitoring and basic daily tasks to level 1 ops engineers you can't expect them to have in-depth knowlage.

Bacula is a great bit of kit, cheap and will do anything you want, but again the managment over heads are very high. I know out there, there is lots of opensource software that functionality wise is as good as if not better than the leading vendors. When you pay for a solution like this what you are paying for is the interface, most of them take existing technologies, such as windows VSS, NDMP, Tape drives, SAN technologies, VMware API's, etc, all of which are standidised tools, and package them in to a single interface.

So to me the interface is very important, as that is what I am paying the money for.

discount81

I doubt backup exec is suitable for your needs.

it_consultant

I use CommVault every day. If you aren't used to it it feels clunky. Once you understand the idea behind it the interface makes perfect sense. You just cant compare it to Backup Exec.

Essendon

We use HP Data Protector and I am the backups admin. I wont recommend it to anyone, unless you want technology that is years old and see errors/bugs that only their developers can understand. I've had issues backing up VM's and restorng data since the upgrade to v7.01.