How to backup a server...?

[chavo]

Hi all,

Looking for some help. I have a friend who has a server, this is a hosted win 2008 r2 server on easy space.

We are trying to get a backup of the server, we have installed a trial version of acronis and several other softwares. The problem is that once the backup is complete I have a 200 gb .tib file on the root of the server, I need to get this file offsite. Originally I set up a WebDAV to push the file to an offsite location but this failed, a little bit of research and I found out that WebDAV has a size restriction of 4gb per file. Speaking to many people I hear that using FTP is also out as there is a strong likelihood that the file will corrupt during transfer.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to get this 200gb file offsite please? Racking my brains but can't think of anything.

[blueball]

You can set Acronis to create multiple files under 4Gb rather than a single large file, then you can get them at your leisure.

[snootyjim]

You could install WinRAR on there and compress the .tib file into a multi-RAR set of whatever size suits you. Then you can FTP the files one by one.

[peterb]

Simplest solution is to copy it to an external drive and physically move it - if the offsite storage is close by. Other methods would include VPN tunnel, compressing the file first. Winrar has been mentioned, but you could use one of the zip compression utilities. Winzip is the obvious one.

SFTP, an improved version of the FTP protocol is another option. PUTTY is an open source Windows implementation, but I have only use that for Windows to Linux server communication, I haven't used it for Windows to Windows transfers, you would need to check the suitability for that.

[chavo]

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. I didn't realise acronis could be set to create smaller files, this may well be the way to do it. Thanks. In order to automate the process as much as possible I don't think that winrar is a good idea. FTP etc is apparently a bit risky in terms of file integrity.

Collection is out of the question, would take a 4 hour drive to the data centre. Any other ideas appreciated.

[spoon_]

WinSCP is probably the best SFTP free client so you might want to try that.

7zip is also good, in my experience better than WinRAR at Ultra compressing the files.

[peterb]

FTP is risky, not keast from security aspects. SFTP is much better, and includes considerably better authentication and integrity mechanisms.

[Paul_tech]

Try Handy Backup Server, reliable software solution for Windos Server and network workstations backup.

[mikerr]

Collection is out of the question, would take a 4 hour drive to the data centre. Any other ideas appreciated.

Maybe, but work out how long 200GB will take to transfer over the internet...

I'd be looking at posting a HDD / or collection once, then doing incrementals.

[Pob255]

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. I didn't realise acronis could be set to create smaller files, this may well be the way to do it. Thanks. In order to automate the process as much as possible I don't think that winrar is a good idea. FTP etc is apparently a bit risky in terms of file integrity.

Collection is out of the question, would take a 4 hour drive to the data centre. Any other ideas appreciated.

if you have some sort of agreement with a data centre for the off site storage of the data then surely they must have some form system to get the data to them?

If it's generally just a emergency safety measure, which off site generally is, by which I mean you have a full backup from which to recover incase of catastrophic failier then it doesn't really have to be in a "data centre"

The way we work is we have a pair of SANs which do a daily incremental backups, then we do a weekly backup from one of the SANs, the data is compressed, encrypted and put onto a good old tape, which is then taken home by one of us.
That way normal recovery, the "hello, I seem to have deleted a file I need" type gets restored off the SANs and if something really catastrophic happens, like the building burns down*, we still have the tapes off site from which we could rebuild the servers and recover the data.
(* if just the server exploded or something then we could recover of one of the two SANs, the SANs are also in separate buildings so a catastrophic event would have to effect the whole site.)