Backup System For 5 PC SMB

BRRABill

OEM Server licenses are not something you would ever buy or talk about, they simply should not exist. When you talk server licensing, no one means OEM. It's a standard best practice to never have OEM servers and no serious business does.

That is definitely something I agree with.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

For OEM licenses, and also spinning up a VM for disaster recovery purposes. Are you saying that is allowed?

Server (outside of OEM) does exactly what you would expect. You can move to different hardware in a DR scenario once every 90 days. With certain SA licensing I believe that you can move as often as you like.

Dashrender

So getting back to the OP, where are you leaning on this backup solution?

scottalanmiller

My take is that given the revelations about the intent of the cloud option and now understanding how either costly it would be to go with VDI as well as how long it would take to pull down a back, that either local NAS or local AetherStore storage of backups is probably ideal.

scottalanmiller

Things that I would consider:

Separate the OS from the data in backups. This makes backups smaller and faster both to make and to restore and, of course, reduces the needed storage for the backups over time allowing you to retain more of them.
Standardize on an OS version and image with software packages.
Get VL imaging rights.
Create a base installation image to use, pop it onto DVD and have it ready to rebuild. This will get you to a clean "base" very rapidly with your OS, drivers and all standard applications ready to go.
Do a file restore of data.

scottalanmiller

As far as NAS vs. AetherStore. Both work fine here. If you have a stable office where you can put a NAS, the NAS requires a hardware purchase, uses power, will need a shelf on which to live, etc. Not a big deal. Requires the purchase of at minimum a two bay NAS unit and two hard drives for RAID 1. Possibly more depending on your capacity and performance needs.

AetherStore requires no hardware, only software, and uses your existing drive capacity for redundancy. This requires that there be excess storage available on the network (you can always move to larger internal drives or add secondary ones for this purpose) and more or less needs you to have your systems remain online so that they can replicate the storage. If you have static desktops, this is likely the better bet for this scenario.

BRRABill

I am stil a little befuddled by the fact you cannot virtual boot a backup desktop image. Literally every product on the market that does this for desktops (I've given 4 examples of leading products below) sell this as a feature. Are you saying it is all a scam, considering these are desktop backup products? Or that each should have an asterisk (none of which does) that says "this feature only available if you separately get a virtual license for the machine you are backing up"?

Not that I do not believe this group (or of course the source, @chris), but it just seems like maybe I'm not explaining myself properly. I now consider this group like my wife. never wrong.

Disaster Recovery – Recover your entire PC in minutes to the same location, to dissimilar hardware, or to a virtual desktop.
Quickly restore data locally or remotely. In the event of hardware failure or natural disaster, recover an entire PC in minutes
with Acronis’ fast bare-metal restore.

Restore a system to the same or different hardware or to virtual environments with StorageCraft Recovery Environment and HIR
Rapidly boot a backup image as a virtual machine (temporary system failover) with VirtualBoot

If the OS installed on the computer fails to start for some reason, you can boot
the OS from the recovery image. Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE lets you create a
bootable recovery image of your computer on different kinds of media,

Virtual Image Boot (Technology Preview)
The ability to directly convert a Macrium System Image file into a running VM. Provides instant boot of failed systems for business continuity.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

I am stil a little befuddled by the fact you cannot virtual boot a backup desktop image. Literally every product on the market that does this for desktops (I've given 4 examples of leading products below) sell this as a feature.

None of them do it "for desktops." Not in the way that you describe. You are completely outside of anyone's intended usage. It would never have occurred to me that someone would even try this.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

Are you saying it is all a scam, considering these are desktop backup products? Or that each should have an asterisk (none of which does) that says "this feature only available if you separately get a virtual license for the machine you are backing up"?

Which one of these is a desktop backup product? All of the ones that you were mentioning were server products that just don't stop you from using them on desktops, right?

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

Disaster Recovery – Recover your entire PC in minutes to the same location, to dissimilar hardware, or to a virtual desktop.
Quickly restore data locally or remotely. In the event of hardware failure or natural disaster, recover an entire PC in minutes
with Acronis’ fast bare-metal restore.

Restore a system to the same or different hardware or to virtual environments with StorageCraft Recovery Environment and HIR
Rapidly boot a backup image as a virtual machine (temporary system failover) with VirtualBoot

If the OS installed on the computer fails to start for some reason, you can boot
the OS from the recovery image. Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE lets you create a
bootable recovery image of your computer on different kinds of media,

Virtual Image Boot (Technology Preview)
The ability to directly convert a Macrium System Image file into a running VM. Provides instant boot of failed systems for business continuity.

So of those, the only one that is American is StorageCraft. The others are all Russian, I believe. I know two are. The only two that I know are desktop products are from areas that are not covered by the MS licenses, right? So for them in their local area, they can do that.

BRRABill

@scottalanmiller said:

Which one of these is a desktop backup product? All of the ones that you were mentioning were server products that just don't stop you from using them on desktops, right?

Every one was the desktop version of their product.

For example, here is StorageCraft:
https://www.storagecraft.com/products/shadowprotect-desktop-backup

scottalanmiller

A good example of this is NComputing. Remember them? Everyone had the same discussion about them - they sold a product whose apparent intent was to turn a Windows desktop into a full blown terminal server. Everyone kept saying "if they sell it, obviously it is legal."

But of course it doesn't work that way. It is perfectly legal "to sell it", the product could be used in legitimate ways (but none that made any sense.) Products like this put ALL onus on the end users to get the right licenses to do what they want. Remember that this will work just fine if you work out an EA license with the right terms with MS or if you use Linux desktops or whatever. The vendors have no reason to care about the license since it isn't their problem and is often quite complex.

NComputing also was based in China so had no concerns about whether they would be held accountable for selling something whose only actual purpose was to violate a license.

scottalanmiller

Another great example is CloudatCost who used to be active both here and in SW. They sold Microsoft cloud servers. Except, they pushed the licensing to the end users. And MS doesn't offer any license that can be used. So literally they were a cloud vendor without a product with any legal means to use. None.

But since all risk went to the customers, they didn't care and kept selling the product as it was, and still do, long after it was public that they couldn't legally be used.

BRRABill

@scottalanmiller said:

It would never have occurred to me that someone would even try this

But as I said, almost every desktop backup product that does block level or image based backups touts this as a feature.

That's why I know about it. We moved from the world of tape into the likes of this kind of abckups, most of who offer desktop options.

BRRABill

Again, not arguing, just trying to get my facts straight before going back to our vendors.

It seems to me they are doing exactly what you say. Making a lot of money selling a product that isn't legal to be used.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

Again, not arguing, just trying to get my facts straight before going back to our vendors.

It seems to me they are doing exactly what you say. Making a lot of money selling a product that isn't legal to be used.

That may be true, that's a common thing to do. Although keep in mind a few things:

It might be legal in other places.
The world is not all Windows and other OSes can do this legally.
That they offer the feature is just a feature, how it relates to licensing is not their concern and they easily have no idea.
Licensing is complex and changes, the feature could easily become useful.
The technology has uses, just not in all the possible ways to use it.
Their competitors offer that feature and get customers from offering it, lacking it puts a vendor at a disadvantage so they can't avoid offering it in a competitive marketplace.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

But as I said, almost every desktop backup product that does block level or image based backups touts this as a feature.

The nature of block and image backup technologies means that this is just sitting there, waiting to be used. They would basically have to block it to cripple themselves to not offer it. The ability to restore as an image to the original machine gives them the ability to restore to others. It's just the "nature of the thing."

scottalanmiller

The technology has its place. Imagine and block backups can be a good thing. Like virtualization, though, it often makes doing things that are not licensed usage very, very easy.

BRRABill

In a perfect world though, this technology would be awesome.

The selling point of something like Datto is that is a key system goes down, I can spin up a virtual copy of it (either locally or in the cloud in a real disaster) and my users won't even know the difference.

I'm not asking to pirate the software. I'm asking to put a virtual representation of the system I've already licensed on the network until I get the original server fixed. To be honest, I feel it's complete BS that is prohibited. (For desktops.) We'll get to the servers later.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said:

In a perfect world though, this technology would be awesome.

Indeed, although in a perfect world, we wouldn't need it