Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Sat Jan 30 02:14:49 CST 2010
A great piece of research Gustav... I have often wondered why there were not more backup applications taking advantage of the windows 'shadow backup' feature and it seems Second Copy does a just fine. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Gustav Brock Sent: Friday, January 29, 2010 8:55 AM To: dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com Subject: Re: [dba-Tech] Once and for all time: server backups Hi all Sadly, we had to give up on DeltaCopy and rsync. This is just not a combo for Windows machines with a WAN in between - to many protocol sync errors, troubles with security settings on folders, and an installation and configuration task that takes a top notch techie _days_ for tweaking and testing. It just doesn't pay off. HOWever, we found a small gem, Gbridge: http://www.gbridge.com/ This is a unique combo of VPN connection with authentication via your Google account, a backup program, a folder sync, a secure web interface to your file store, remote control (with a little help from VNC), and extensive logging - at zero cost. The only feature missing is some method to e-mail a summarized report of the happenings. You can connect any count of machines both from your intranet and remote invited machines, you could even build an extranet with this tiny tool. This we use for backing up to a remote location (my home). In addition we backup to a local machine using Second Copy: http://www.centered.com/ This is not free but cheap and features archiving of previous versions of files when updated at the main server. Finally the main server is backed via MySecureBackup to "the cloud" at Amazon. Everything is run an controlled from a dedicated backup station (actually an old laptop with an external drive). So now we have a setup for backing up the main file server: 1. Server to local backup station via Second Copy 2. Backup station to remote location via Gbridge 3. Server to the cloud via MySecureBackup This forms a 2½ way backup setup (2. will fail if 1. fails) which is satisfactory as a 2 way system is minimum in case one system should fail. If you change the main server (NetWare at the moment) to a Windows Server, Gbridge could run on that and you had a 3 way setup. Of course, the backup station represents a single point of possible failure but for operation only, not for storage. If that is a concern, the operations of this machine could be split onto two machines or even three. Further, with a Windows Server you could activate its default shadow copying backup for a fourth backup system suited for a system recovery where the above backup setup is for file backup only. /gustav _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com