Automate second windows server backup

Ish

Ish

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Hi All

On our server running Server 2019 using the builtin Windows Backup tool we have a daily backup to a local USB drive.

We also do a manual weekly backup to a NAS drive but is there anyway of keeping the daily backup and also have the weekly backup automated as well?
 
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When you say USB drive do you mean a USB flash drive or an external hard drive plugged in via USB? I would absolutely not use the former for any sort of back-up.

If it is a business you should probably look at implementing a more robust backup solution with long term archiving, something like a GFS - which allows you to meet any compliance targets and cover your backside.

If it is a very small business, one man band, or domestic environment you could automate a weekly backup using some robocopy scripts and set it up as a scheduled task.
 
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Tell me you using at least RAID-1 on that NAS drive!!!

What NAS drive?

Anyway OP. As for this much data you really should look at better backing up of files. That’s a lot of data to lose.

Incremental backups are fine if it’s going to separate HDDs but these are external drives right? That’s asking for trouble, your playing with fire here. Speaking of fire... what would you do if there ever was one? All data lost, including backups.

You need to look at off site backing up here. That about of data probably won’t be cheap.
 
Soldato
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If this is a business then this is a terrible backup plan.

We backup the whole server with at the moment is 2-3TB.

Our WAN is 100/100 Mbps

Is that 2-3Tb of data you backup, or is that the size of the storage?

Assuming that you don't have 2-3Tb of data that changes every backup cycle, that's an incredibly inefficient way of backing up. Not to mention the difficulties of restoring.

The first question - is this mission critical data? Basically would the business survive if this data was lost? If it isn't all mission critical, then split out what bit is mission critical.

Further pointers:
- Look at some backup software rather than windows built in option. Proper backup software gives you the ability to implement decent backup strategies, and is also much more efficient - such as only backing up the data that has changed.
- Look at the 3-2-1 rule for your mission critical data. This is essentially three copies of data, on two devices, and one copy held offsite.
- Consider how much data is similar, there are backup softwares out there that can do software deduplication. I.e. If your data consists of a number of VMs, then deduplication reduces the 'footprint' by saving the bits of data that it sees as a match only once - basically reduces the size of the backup.
- Have a think about DR scenarios, how quickly would you need your mission critical data restored, what about the other data. I'm not sure if Windows backup has the ability to selectively restore (basically an all or nothing approach). Decent backup software can give you the ability to restore more selectively. I.e. If you needed to restore a specific email rather than the entire mailbox. Or restoring a word document rather than the entire users file system data.
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Mar 2008
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2,608
Hi All

On our server running Server 2019 using the builtin Windows Backup tool we have a daily backup to a local USB drive.

We also do a manual weekly backup to a NAS drive but is there anyway of keeping the daily backup and also have the weekly backup automated as well?

take a look at the command line options for windows backup and you can automate a batch file to back up to the second location
 

Ish

Ish

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OP
Joined
11 Jan 2006
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1,812
Location
West Midlands
What NAS drive?

Anyway OP. As for this much data you really should look at better backing up of files. That’s a lot of data to lose.

Incremental backups are fine if it’s going to separate HDDs but these are external drives right? That’s asking for trouble, your playing with fire here. Speaking of fire... what would you do if there ever was one? All data lost, including backups.

You need to look at off site backing up here. That about of data probably won’t be cheap.

We do have a very basic file only cloud backup as well.

If this is a business then this is a terrible backup plan.



Is that 2-3Tb of data you backup, or is that the size of the storage?

Assuming that you don't have 2-3Tb of data that changes every backup cycle, that's an incredibly inefficient way of backing up. Not to mention the difficulties of restoring.

The first question - is this mission critical data? Basically would the business survive if this data was lost? If it isn't all mission critical, then split out what bit is mission critical.

Further pointers:
- Look at some backup software rather than windows built in option. Proper backup software gives you the ability to implement decent backup strategies, and is also much more efficient - such as only backing up the data that has changed.
- Look at the 3-2-1 rule for your mission critical data. This is essentially three copies of data, on two devices, and one copy held offsite.
- Consider how much data is similar, there are backup softwares out there that can do software deduplication. I.e. If your data consists of a number of VMs, then deduplication reduces the 'footprint' by saving the bits of data that it sees as a match only once - basically reduces the size of the backup.
- Have a think about DR scenarios, how quickly would you need your mission critical data restored, what about the other data. I'm not sure if Windows backup has the ability to selectively restore (basically an all or nothing approach). Decent backup software can give you the ability to restore more selectively. I.e. If you needed to restore a specific email rather than the entire mailbox. Or restoring a word document rather than the entire users file system data.

It was about 2TB of data on the intitial backup and then incremental after that

Which software would you recommend?

take a look at the command line options for windows backup and you can automate a batch file to back up to the second location

Thanks. Will have a look in to this option as well
 
Last edited:

Ish

Ish

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OP
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Location
West Midlands
When you say USB drive do you mean a USB flash drive or an external hard drive plugged in via USB? I would absolutely not use the former for any sort of back-up.

If it is a business you should probably look at implementing a more robust backup solution with long term archiving, something like a GFS - which allows you to meet any compliance targets and cover your backside.

If it is a very small business, one man band, or domestic environment you could automate a weekly backup using some robocopy scripts and set it up as a scheduled task.

External drive connected via USB.
Tell me you using at least RAID-1 on that NAS drive!!!

Yes it is Raid 1
 
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20 Feb 2020
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I have good experience with the backup tools and I can say that the best tools that can process this job and more are GoodSync and Gs RichCopy 360. You don't have to manually backup, you can just set jobs to automatically backup daily, weekly.....etc,, google both
 
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