Backup File Server to DAS
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Hi everybody
i have a file server windows 2008 R2, i setup a daily scheduled backup on it (but the backup is made locally : backup D:\ to E:)
my concern is : i risk to lose everything if the HD get damaged because the data and backup reside on the same physical HD.
you may ask me why not changing the backup destination to network shared folder ?? i will tell you that if i select network shared folder: i will have only one backup at a time (each day the new backup overwrite the previous one) not like if i select local volume (i can restore at any given time)
my question here is : if i buy a DAS (direct attached Storage) and connect it with my file server, does the Windows Server Backup consider it as local volume so that i can select it as backup destination and allow me to have daily version of backups or it will consider it as network shared folder ??
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No matter what you do with DAS, it is local storage to Windows. Windows has no means of differentiating whether the DAS array is inside the server chassis or outside of it as long as you are using the popular DAS protocols like SATA or SAS.
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So yes, with any DAS or SAN, Windows will see any attached storage as a local drive.
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Local disks, DAS and SAN are all block devices. This is actually what you are asking about. It is not local versus non-local, it is block (SAS, SATA, eSATA, IEEE1394, USB, FC, iSCSI, zSAN, ATAoE, etc.) versus file (NFS, SMB, AFP, AFS, FTP, HTTP, etc.)
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What kind of DAS devices are you looking at? Drobo makes some really nice ones that are smaller. The Drobo 5D is quite popular and can hold five 3.5" drives, can have an SSD cache if you want, does RAID 6 and connects over eSATA and USB3. It's kind of the Cadillac of desktop DAS units, which sounds like maybe all that you need here?
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Or are you planning to do something really big like a rack mount DAS unit?
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DAS also means if you get something like cryptolocker on the fileserver then it will likely mess with your daily backups. I hope you have off site backups too.
Also I'd use something else besides windows backup - it kinda sucks and means you need it to recover your data.
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@StrongBad said:
What kind of DAS devices are you looking at? Drobo makes some really nice ones that are smaller. The Drobo 5D is quite popular and can hold five 3.5" drives, can have an SSD cache if you want, does RAID 6 and connects over eSATA and USB3. It's kind of the Cadillac of desktop DAS units, which sounds like maybe all that you need here?
Don't go for Drobo! They apply mods to Linux so you'll have hard times recovering data back from their devices. Been there done that (c) ...
Cheap Synology and Netgear (don't go for their 4+ disk units as they have bad ROI commodity servers are preferred).
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@KOOLER said:
@StrongBad said:
What kind of DAS devices are you looking at? Drobo makes some really nice ones that are smaller. The Drobo 5D is quite popular and can hold five 3.5" drives, can have an SSD cache if you want, does RAID 6 and connects over eSATA and USB3. It's kind of the Cadillac of desktop DAS units, which sounds like maybe all that you need here?
Don't go for Drobo! They apply mods to Linux so you'll have hard times recovering data back from their devices. Been there done that (c) ...
Cheap Synology and Netgear (don't go for their 4+ disk units as they have bad ROI commodity servers are preferred).
In other words you're suggesting only the 2 disk models? Otherwise a commodity server is more cost effective?
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Have you considered not using the built in Windows backup but instead using something for free? I'm not 100% sure on the features or limitations to Crashplan but I know that they are completely free and do some really cool stuff. And since they are free you could download it and test it all that you want. If it isn't better than the Windows Backup you could just switch back, no money lost.
http://www.code42.com/crashplan/features/
They list local drives (external hard drive) as a backup option.
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@Dashrender said:
In other words you're suggesting only the 2 disk models? Otherwise a commodity server is more cost effective?
Well you can pick up used 16Bay SATA/SAS servers for around $100-$200 on ebay.
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@Jason said:
DAS also means if you get something like cryptolocker on the fileserver then it will likely mess with your daily backups. I hope you have off site backups too.
And to be clear, by DAS here he means all block devices as I mentioned above. Anything that appears to the system as a local disk is 100% vulnerable to ransomware like cryptolocker. There is a reason that local, always attached disks are not used for backup devices generally.
NAS will protect you from this as there is a ton more security and protection.
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@KOOLER said:
Don't go for Drobo! They apply mods to Linux so you'll have hard times recovering data back from their devices. Been there done that (c) ...
Modify Linux? They don't even run Linux!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Jason said:
DAS also means if you get something like cryptolocker on the fileserver then it will likely mess with your daily backups. I hope you have off site backups too.
And to be clear, by DAS here he means all block devices as I mentioned above. Anything that appears to the system as a local disk is 100% vulnerable to ransomware like cryptolocker. There is a reason that local, always attached disks are not used for backup devices generally.
NAS will protect you from this as there is a ton more security and protection.
NAS will protect you from this only if the NAS isn't mapped. Most ransomware will walk standard shares today too.
So if your NAS has to be mapped into the OS before the backup software can run, hopefully you can create a script to map/unmap it as needed. -
hhhh i can see many choices and suggestion here,
what i want is only to make sure whether my windows server 2008 R2 will consider DAS as local partition so that i can make daily schedule backup (not overwrite the previous backup version but rather append the changes and keep daily version backups) -
@IT-ADMIN said:
hhhh i can see many choices and suggestion here,
what i want is only to make sure whether my windows server 2008 R2 will consider DAS as local partition so that i can make daily schedule backup (not overwrite the previous backup version but rather append the changes and keep daily version backups)Yes, DAS, not NAS will do what you want.
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@Reid-Cooper said:
Have you considered not using the built in Windows backup but instead using something for free? I'm not 100% sure on the features or limitations to Crashplan but I know that they are completely free and do some really cool stuff. And since they are free you could download it and test it all that you want. If it isn't better than the Windows Backup you could just switch back, no money lost.
http://www.code42.com/crashplan/features/
They list local drives (external hard drive) as a backup option.
windows backup also offer these option (local and external HD) but for the external HD they don't keep old version backup but rather they overwrite each time the previous backups
for this reason i want an external HD but still considered by windows as local -
@IT-ADMIN said:
what i want is only to make sure whether my windows server 2008 R2 will consider DAS as local partition so that i can make daily schedule backup (not overwrite the previous backup version but rather append the changes and keep daily version backups)
Yup, and that is answered. Without question, Windows has no means to determine if it is local or not local. It's block that you are asking about, not local. Windows doesn't have a concept of local or network, only block or file.
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@IT-ADMIN said:
windows backup also offer these option ...
That's why he recommended a free alternative. Any reason that you are only looking to use Windows' limited backup options?
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@scottalanmiller said:
Windows doesn't have a concept of local or network, only block or file.
so how they know network shared folder ?? is it because they use SMB protocol right ??
