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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 10:41 am 
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zilla wrote:
Just installed the BDBB Add-In. Exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you! :)

While investigating what backup strategy will work best for me I enabled the duplicate WHS backups. It doesn't seem as if it started duplicating immediately. Is this something that will happen next Sunday? How do I know that the WHS backups have been duplicated? Will it show up in the pie chart in the server storage tab in WHSC?



It should start with the next balancing which occurs once every hour.


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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 10:48 am 
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zilla wrote:
Just installed the BDBB Add-In. Exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you! :)

While investigating what backup strategy will work best for me I enabled the duplicate WHS backups. It doesn't seem as if it started duplicating immediately. Is this something that will happen next Sunday? How do I know that the WHS backups have been duplicated? Will it show up in the pie chart in the server storage tab in WHSC?


Keep in mind that with duplication rather than a full external BDBB backup; if the backup database gets corrupted for whatever reason, the duplicate will also be corrupted. With full external BDBB backups you can restore the backup database to the last known good backup set.


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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 10:50 am 
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zilla wrote:
Just installed the BDBB Add-In. Exactly what I have been looking for. Thank you! :)

While investigating what backup strategy will work best for me I enabled the duplicate WHS backups. It doesn't seem as if it started duplicating immediately. Is this something that will happen next Sunday? How do I know that the WHS backups have been duplicated? Will it show up in the pie chart in the server storage tab in WHSC?


You should see the System component of the Pie Chart increase to the size of your Backups + 20GB.

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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 2:25 pm 
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yakuza wrote:
You should see the System component of the Pie Chart increase to the size of your Backups + 20GB.


Thank you -- yes my backups are now 126GB and the system component 146GB.

Trying to think thru a disaster recovery scenario where my house is destroyed together with the WHS server and three clients.

Right now I am leaning towards a solution where I backup the backups to the WHS shared folders and then backup those to an online service.

So to recover I get a new Mediasmart server and install the addin to recover the shared folders from the online service. I then install the BDBB addin and recover the client backups from the shared folders. I then use the PC recovery disks to restore the clients from the new server.

Any flaws in this reasoning? Can I use any Mediasmart server, not just my current EX47x?


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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 2:47 pm 
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You can use any Windows Home Server, it does not have to be a MediaSmart Server for BDBB.

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PostPosted: Thu May 21, 2009 4:00 pm 
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zilla wrote:
... I am leaning towards a solution where I backup the backups to the WHS shared folders and then backup those to an online service... Any flaws in this reasoning?

The big flaw is the amount of data you will need to send to the on-line service, the time to send it and the costs associated with that.

I believe the best approach is to save to an external drive and rotate that to an off-site location, bringing an older copy home for the next round. Then use the "cloud" (on-line service) for only very critical files that change frequently or may be needed immediately. Backups of system files, music and DVDs do not fit that criteria. Financial data and business records would.

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PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 3:57 am 
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JohnBick wrote:
The big flaw is the amount of data you will need to send to the on-line service, the time to send it and the costs associated with that.
I believe the best approach is to save to an external drive and rotate that to an off-site location, bringing an older copy home for the next round.


Guess I don't think I will be disciplined enough for a manual routine. It's going to be difficult enough to remember to run the BDBB backup regularly. And my main concern is the client backups. If my house burns down it will be important to be up and running quickly. I believe I can get the online storage down to 150GB. If I can get the charge down to $0.10/GBmonth that's reasonable relative to what I pay in home insurance.

I did look at the ioSafe Solo alternative but even if hurricanes isn't a problem around here :) , the chances of burglary are too hi to make it a good alternative.


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PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 9:21 am 
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I believe that the key to success here is automation of the backups. Don't want to get "off-topic" here but if you automate the backups to the external disk then you only need to remember to "take the disk to work" (or the bank or a friend's...) occasionally. I keep one in a Safe-deposit box, one on-line and one ready to put back on-line when I pull the current one. The rest is automated.

A procedure and related discussion can be found at http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3261

Like BDBB this copies the backup database. It ALSO copies the Shared Folders but, unlike the WHS function for that it copies them in NTFS-readable format, not into a database similar to the one used for backups. It does not support any "history" for either.

(Please post any discussion of that in the other thread, not here!)

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PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 10:46 am 
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zilla wrote:
And my main concern is the client backups. If my house burns down it will be important to be up and running quickly.


I'm not sure I'm following your logic here. What do you intend to have up and running quickly, the charred client PC's? :-k

If your house burns down, your PC's are likely gone as well. A bare-metal restore from the WHS Backup DB onto new PC hardware will likely be problematic at best, with new drivers, OS activation, etc.

IMHO a better way is to store the important data on the server shares, and set up an off-site backup for the critical data via one of the offsite Add-Ins such as the HP S3 backup, Jungledisk, etc.

Please let me know if I've mis-understood something!

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PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 2:39 pm 
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yakuza wrote:
What do you intend to have up and running quickly, the charred client PC's? :-k

If your house burns down, your PC's are likely gone as well. A bare-metal restore from the WHS Backup DB onto new PC hardware will likely be problematic at best, with new drivers, OS activation, etc.


Yes that's right the three clients. You are absolutely right -- I have overlooked the hardware side of disaster recovery. It comes from my work -- I am used to hardware manufacturers doing a great job of getting new hardware for their corporate customers when disaster strikes. 9/11 IBM had 2000 customers within 3 blocks of the World Trade towers -- they had 90% of those up and running in new data centers 30 days afterwards.

But the situation for a home user is very different -- I need to talk to Lenovo about a path to replace our three Thinkpads in a way that the restore on new hardware will work.


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PostPosted: Fri May 22, 2009 2:42 pm 
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My thought here is that it is easiest (safest) to back up the entire backup database and then, if necessary, recover individual files. If you backup only the "data" files you have to maintain the list of data directories and, when you miss one, you are in trouble. For 0ff-line storage I would do exactly as you suggest, but for a hardware off-site backup onto an external drive I keep the entire client backup. Even though the hardware may be different (upgraded/newer) in a replacement the files can ALL be recovered individually and none will be missing!

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:30 pm 
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Very interested in implementing the BDBB addin but still have a few questions. Read the Wiki and the posts before I decide to post here. If I have 503gb of current backups what should I expect for in terms of size of a backup of the backup database? Recommended size drive and or make models would be appreciated. Is it fastest to go eSata drive vs USB or a networked drive. From the posts here unless you like long and severe traffic network drives are NOT the way to go. Is that correct? Thanks.
:sanjuan:


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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:40 pm 
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MRL_WHS wrote:
If I have 503gb of current backups what should I expect for in terms of size of a backup of the backup database? Recommended size drive and or make models would be appreciated. Is it fastest to go eSata drive vs USB or a networked drive. From the posts here unless you like long and severe traffic network drives are NOT the way to go. Is that correct?

If the BACKUP DATABASE in WHS is 503GB you need a drive with at least 503GB free. BDBB essentially does a copy of the files; there is no compression involved. With growth factored in you should probably be looking at a 1TB or 1.5TB drive. With the former you would need to delete the backup before creating another. The 1.5TB drive will probably hold two copies -- at least until they grow 20% or so).

An eSATA connection is a bit faster -- but do you really care? The operation is taking place in the server, it does NOT involve any network traffic. (I suggest getting an external enclosure that wil connect via BOTH eSATA and USB. Then you have options on how to connect it going forward. Cost differential is pretty minor these days.)

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PostPosted: Mon Jul 06, 2009 1:46 pm 
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MRL_WHS wrote:
Very interested in implementing the BDBB addin but still have a few questions. Read the Wiki and the posts before I decide to post here. If I have 503gb of current backups what should I expect for in terms of size of a backup of the backup database? Recommended size drive and or make models would be appreciated. Is it fastest to go eSata drive vs USB or a networked drive. From the posts here unless you like long and severe traffic network drives are NOT the way to go. Is that correct? Thanks.
:sanjuan:


The BDBB backup will be the same size as your backup database. Of course esata is fastest, but for a BDBB backup, USB is fine. As far as a network backup goes; it depends on the speed of your network and the target drive. Backup time to a drive on a gigabit connection was about the same as backup to usb. Backup to a drive on a 10/100 connection was about 3 times slower. The size of the target drive will depend on how many backups you want to keep on the drive. You can do the math.


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PostPosted: Wed Jul 15, 2009 4:27 pm 
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If I turn off either of the DB duplication options(which I've had on)... how do I reclaim that disk space?


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