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Hi Guys,

We are currently looking for a backup solution for our company, id appreciate any proposals for the hardware required to for our needs.

Our Setup :

We have 3 sources of Data that requires backing up

Comapny Data- 2.5TB

Exchange emails etc - 500GB

Server O/S - 500GB

Enviroment

Currently we have our file servers and exchange servers virtualised and running from a SAN, out company data is also stored on that SAN.

We have 3 other physical servers that also require backing up.

We currently back everything up to NAS units, 1 x onsite and 1 x offsite.

I need a solution capable of backing this amount of data quickly and reliably so that we can perform idealy daily backups of pretty much everything.

Currently time taken to backup all of our items to the nas units mean we struggle to get daily backups of everything.

We curently have a Dell R310 which we use as our management server that backup exec 2012 sits on.

Any recommendation would be great.

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Checkout Unitrends - weve replaced appassure with it and it rocks, will do everything above without any hassle.

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/256627-announcing-spicyueb-promo-code-for-spiceheads may even mean you can backup most of it for free :slight_smile:

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I have about 8tb on two servers + email + other servers, it backs them up 4 times a day so 3.5tb won’t be an issue :slight_smile:

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sorry probably should have said, its hardware only that I need, we already have a purchased, paid for copy of backupexec 2012

Thanks though

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What are the NAS units you have atm?

There shouldn’t be any reason that a backup takes close to a day on that size of data no matter what the storage media.

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If its only when you do the full that it takes more than a day new hardware for the media or server probably won’t solve the issue, you’d need to look at 10gbe and faster disk access on the servers themselfs.

OR more likely you need to look at how the scheduels are setup in backup exec. A day to do an incremental isn’t right and probably isn’t hardware related.

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Contact Symantec and request a downgrade to 2010R3 - honestly, your life will be much easier

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Well our onsite one is a Iomega Px4-300r which is going back and we are getting refunded, so apart from the software unless its free, im looking to overhaul the hardware side of things, the Iomega and the support that came with it was shocking, i didnt spec it myself it was inherited from when I started so looking for some form of replacement, not sure weather its best to stick with NAS or weather tape or something would be better.

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lol I guess you have been through the pain too lol, to be honest im fine with this version now, have jumped all the hurdles and find it ok to work with now.

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For hardware checkout - Qnap - QNAP | Experts in NAS, Networking, and Smart Surveillance

Although once the Iomega was setup it probably wasn’t the bottle neck.

Re NAS or Tape depends on your needs, I always use tape myself and most places do but some still need tape for insurance etc.

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Damjo,

Even though we have had a rough time installing and working out the “kinks” I would suggest looking at Symantec’s 3600 Appliance. We went this route because it eliminated our software maintenance costs, which paid for a chuck on this unit. It comes with plenty of storage and comes preconfigured for DeDupe. In our Environment we have over 1.5TB of SQL backups, 150GB of Exchange and countless servers that we backup and with DeDupe we are only using 2TB of storage.

-Brian

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Damjo, While you didn’t indicate which hypervisor you are running, I recently wrote a paper that may be of help to you called " Designing Disk For VMware and Hyper-V Backups ". It covers both VMware and Hyper-V. You may find that useful as part of your research. -George

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Hi Brian,

Thanks for that is does look impressive at first sight, what kind of issues did you intially have any may I ask what the costs were ?

also is this the only version ? are there others with higher capacity etc ?

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George our virtual enviroment is 2 x XenServer 5.6 hosting 2 file servers and 3 exchange 2010 servers.

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akp982, the Iomega isnt going back due to speed etc its gong back due to being the 3rd one we have had thats suffered from a hardware failure, it just wasnt reliable.

Im am kinda stuck on choosing between some form of tape method and NAS

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Damjo,

As far as I know, this is the only model. The issues we were having have been corrected due to support tickets and over the past few months Symantec’s support for the appliance has improved dramatically. (See my post here; http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/309361-our-woes-with-symantec-s-3600-appliance. Because of this posting upper management at Symantec saw the issues that Appliance customers were having and they have put new processes into place to make sure that what happened in my posting, doesn’t happen again).

Since you are already on 2012 I would venture to guess most of the issues I had run into you either did or they didn’t apply to you, my problem was because I had an appliance somethings didn’t line up properly (Appliances can’t be added to the domain, they are working on this, but in their current form, they can not.)

Even with all the issues I have had, I would still suggest it because it does work extremely well, but do your home work because it isn’t a fit for everyone.

-Brian

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PS just because you can’t add it to the domain doesn’t mean you can’t use your domain accounts.

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Pretty much any decent NAS will do the job. I like Synology, mostly because they’re the only one I’ve used but they seem to do just about everything imaginable and they don’t cost a lot.

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Damjo -

When it is installation time, keep us close. We have 4 Green Guys from the BE team here for anything you need.

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This is were i’d buy a supermicro server, stuff it with 2TB Barracuda or Constellation drives, and call it a day. I’d install Freenas on it, and use that

Would cost around ~$3000, but well worth it as it would cream anything off the shelf for that price

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