See Part 1 for the initial adventures in Office Backups.
In Part 1 I discussed what I’ve tried and experienced in trying to get reliable office backups going. When all the dust settled, I backed away a bit from the online backup scene and went a similar, but different direction.
In a nutshell, my solution is LogMeIn Backup (features). They supply the software. Their client handles connectivity (aka “firewall proof”). I supply the storage. I get a bit more sleep at night.
Supplying the storage makes sense for us. At one of the data centers I have a database server with an unused terabyte of space. In the office, I have a file server with a free terabyte as well. So, I have all my office servers backing up to the remote data-center. I have all the servers from both data-centers backing up to the office server. Works great.
What do I find especially attractive?
- Price. LogMeIn backup is, essentially, providing some connectivity, security and the software on a monthly basis. No storage. Thus it’s very inexpensive in comparison to the online backup vendors.
- Even compared to the shrink-wrap backup software offerings, it’s still quite competitive — especially when annual support agreements are factored in.
- At this price, I can easily add in some better backup options for our laptops and travelers.
- Each server can have multiple backup sets. I love this! I can have key data going nightly and other data that’s not changed as often going weekly.
- Each backup set can have different settings for storage server, frequency (and schedule) and generations to keep.
- Initial backups can be done locally and then moved to the storage server with a USB drive, DVD or other portable method.
- No need to pump a few hundred gigs over the internet!
- This saved me many days on the first runs (hell, probably a couple weeks)
- Speed! Even with encryption on the files and the network my backups are dramatically faster than any other solution I had tried.
- In one case, down from several hours a night to 20 – 25 minutes.
Downsides? Well, there are a few I suppose.
- Windows Only. At the moment, not a big issue for our shop, but if I do ever bring some *nix servers into the production mix, I’ll have to look elsewhere…
- Or would I use SAMBA and backup those servers’ data via file shares from the windows servers. Hmm..
And well, so far I haven’t come up with any other downsides. But I’m only a week into this, so we’ll see what pops up.
So there you have it, my current solution for handling the office backups. I’m only a week into it, but so far I’m very happy. Thoughts? Things I haven’t considered yet (besides Amanda which I just learned about this weekend!)?
Possibly Related posts:
November 18th, 2007 
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Uhm…my only complaint about your chosen solution at the moment is…not even their website works
I’ve been trying to check the two links you gave for the last 5 minutes and can’t get on lol!
On the other hand…if it’s a solution where the backup is stored in your own storage, it’s better than online backups, which I abhor…so…I guess it’s not as bad as I thought you’d end up going
Fortunately, the links still work for me.
How does this work with Disaster recovery and a domain. If your building burns down, your data is safe, but is there a way to use the backup to do a disaster recovery restore of your Domain controller? or do you have to re-build the domain and then re-import your data.
[...] « EverNote for Free Office Backups: The Journey, Part 2 [...]
Hey Nathan – It doesn’t do much for my domains, true. But I sure feel better about our data.
For one of my domains, I have a DC at the office and another at one of the data centers (connected via VPN). I suppose if I was half-bright I’d do the same for the other domain!
That makes sense. The DC’s do their own backup basically. Hopefully they make that feature available soon, because other than that, it is a great idea.
Im curious about the restore backup function too?! How does it work? And what precautions are in place so that the offsite back isnt corrupt? Cheers, Paul
Hi “web design” (you must have some progressive parents!)
The restore is pretty straightforward. From the logmein backup client you click the “Restore” button. Then, using a pretty typical directory tree and file browser, select the file(s) to restore. Choose a generation or version of it, determine where you want it and turn it loose.
As for precautions — keep in mind that “off site” is one of your machines. I test it like I test any other backup solution – test restores and then verify the files are the same and usable.
[...] poking around the site to get my backups going, I found the other factor in the “Extra Security” section of Account Management. [...]
I thought it was kind of pricey.
at 35bucks a year for 3 computers. thats 105 a year. Not horrible, but when you add extra harddrive storage. that probably 200 for the first year?
for just a couple hundred more you could buy a pretty good NAS.
They should drop the price to about a 3rd of what they are currently asking. I would buy it for that (since im providing the storage).