Backup System For 5 PC SMB
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@MattSpeller said:
@BRRABill go acronis then like you mentioned in the OP - I used it years ago and it kicked some serious butt for stuff like that.
I was actually looking at that.
http://www.acronis.com/en-us/cloud/backup-service/purchase/
$299 a year for 3 PCs with 250GB. local and cloud.
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@scottalanmiller said:
- Continue to use backup products like StorageCraft and avoid getting a NAS but move to AetherStore to turn the unused local drive space into a backup target for the network.
funny I too was thinking of AetherStore while at lunch.
Good one Scott. -
Though to go from 250GB to 500GB the price goes from $299 to $1049.
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This is one of the areas where Aetherstore would really shine, I think. I'm currently using it as a backup target for my lab at work, and it seems to do pretty good (and I have a crappy lab setup, lol).
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@dafyre said:
This is one of the areas where Aetherstore would really shine, I think. I'm currently using it as a backup target for my lab at work, and it seems to do pretty good (and I have a crappy lab setup, lol).
How does it deal with getting the data offsite?
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@BRRABill said:
@dafyre said:
This is one of the areas where Aetherstore would really shine, I think. I'm currently using it as a backup target for my lab at work, and it seems to do pretty good (and I have a crappy lab setup, lol).
How does it deal with getting the data offsite?
Instead of getting a NAS, you would use Aetherstore. And then get the data Off-Site with whatever products you have been looking at for that.
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@BRRABill said:
Though to go from 250GB to 500GB the price goes from $299 to $1049.
Acronis is horrifically expensive but it can be the difference between 1 person IT department and having to hire a 2nd.
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I should mention Aetherstore would work best if everybody is working from Desktops that are left on 24/7, and not desktops that are shut off at the end of the day or laptops that are gone a lot.
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The use of the NAS should only be for the data. I suppose you could also image the PCs and store the images on the NAS, the replicate it to the cloud.
Again, move away from making regular images of the endpoints. That's home user thinking, not SMB thinking.
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@BRRABill said:
@dafyre said:
This is one of the areas where Aetherstore would really shine, I think. I'm currently using it as a backup target for my lab at work, and it seems to do pretty good (and I have a crappy lab setup, lol).
How does it deal with getting the data offsite?
It does not. You would do that using any normal tool to move the data offsite. AetherStore is an onsite storage solution only. It turns your desktop PCs into a "network SAN."
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@MattSpeller said:
@BRRABill said:
Though to go from 250GB to 500GB the price goes from $299 to $1049.
Acronis is horrifically expensive but it can be the difference between 1 person IT department and having to hire a 2nd.
Except we've been hired by companies because Acronis was so complicated to get working correctly that even with Acronis support they couldn't get it working. So it could, in rare cases, be getting Acronis to work that requires you to go from one to two IT staffers
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@dafyre said:
I should mention Aetherstore would work best if everybody is working from Desktops that are left on 24/7, and not desktops that are shut off at the end of the day or laptops that are gone a lot.
Should be mentioned that you have a lot of control with AetherStore and you could use just some of the desktops for it and not others. But you hope to have four "always on" nodes which doesn't leave a ton of flexibility at this size.
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@Dashrender said:
Again, move away from making regular images of the endpoints. That's home user thinking, not SMB thinking.
I'm still not sure I understand why. I would think the opposite. Home users do NOT do images. Yet, IMO an incremental image based backup is the best you can get.
Let's take for example a 1 person accounting office or a 2 person law firm. It seems to me the method I am looking for would be more efficient for them, not less.
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@BRRABill said:
I'm still not sure I understand why. I would think the opposite. Home users do NOT do images. Yet, IMO an incremental image based backup is the best you can get.
Well in the big enterprise space, even servers are more and more rarely being backed up. Backups are moving towards data only to allow for lower storage needs, faster backups, faster recoveries and more ability to retain data long term as the retention needs are lower.
Home users rarely do backups. When they do, either image backups or "file to cloud" tools appear to be the most common.
I would argue that the image based backup or block based with incrementals like you have that can create an image is very good, it is not the best. The best that is practical with what you are working with, sure. I'm not saying that you should consider anything "more" as that would push the bounds of the ridiculous, but I just don't want it to be missed that this would not be generally considered the best even for situations where data is stored locally.
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@BRRABill said:
Let's take for example a 1 person accounting office or a 2 person law firm. It seems to me the method I am looking for would be more efficient for them, not less.
If you are able to retrieve individual files from the backups (StorageCraft and Veeam both allow for this) then I would agree that that is a very good approach when you have a local backup target like AetherStore or a NAS device. When going to cloud, I would say that it is generally quite impractical unless, maybe if you have Gigabit connections like Google Fiber.
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@scottalanmiller said:
that this would not be generally considered the best even for situations where data is stored locally.You mean in terms of ease-of-use for the end user? Yeah, I agree with that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
When going to cloud, I would say that it is generally quite impractical unless, maybe if you have Gigabit connections like Google Fiber.
Really just for the initial seeding, or if the user has really big files. On our servers (and probably the PCs of people in a 5 PC or less office) the incrementals that are sent to the cloud are pretty small.
Most services have initial seeding options, some (such as Datto) for free.
We didn't use that on our servers. It took a day or so but the initial upload went fine. But we have 75/75 FIOS. I guess not everyone is lucky to have that.
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BTW: this is only my second posting, but this is really like live chatting with a bunch of my close IT buddies. Awesome!
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
that this would not be generally considered the best even for situations where data is stored locally.You mean in terms of ease-of-use for the end user? Yeah, I agree with that.
That was not my primary thought. Generally backups are managed (injecting personal assumption there, but I'm pretty sure that that is correct.) This is valid, but just not what I was getting at. I was referring to less network and systems overhead, more ability to rapidly restore, less cost, etc.
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@BRRABill said:
Really just for the initial seeding, or if the user has really big files. On our servers (and probably the PCs of people in a 5 PC or less office) the incrementals that are sent to the cloud are pretty small.
What is sent TO the cloud is of minor concern. The issue is how do you restore quickly if you have to pull down a massive image of your systems instead of only the data?
