Backup solutions on/off-site

So I have a Mac Pro 5,1 with 4 internal [might expand to 5] and I also have a laptop and might get a new Mac Pro 2013 soon...
Now in total I'm guessing I'm actually using about 500GB/1TB of my own actual personal data, but that number will be growing in time as usage grows...
I'm just curious as to what people use for backing up data both on-site/in-house and off-site/off-location?
I'm not using Time Machine, cause I can't really back up all these drives into 1 time machine backup, nor would I really want to...
I checked out Carbonite, but am not too sure that it would be the best fit for me. Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with any other services they can recommend?
Any help is apprecaited. Thanks!

I know how to back up and restore...I'm asking more about what kind of off-site services [Carbonite, Mozy, Dropbox, etc.] do people use and also how do people backup bigger system in-house? Do they use Drobos? Or other NAS devices and link them to an off-site service like Carbonite/Mozy?
I'm bascially trying to condense all my drives into one place which then gets backed up into a online service, so I know my data is secured in and out of my house should anything happen.

Similar Messages

TM backup far away, off site?

Hi folks,
Time Machine works great, it has saved me already on a couple of occasions. But the best backup would be a backup drive far away. After all, if a house fire or flood wipes out my MacBook, it would wipe out my backup drive as well. My dad lives 200 miles away. He has broadband. He has a MacBook, too, if it matters. If I bought a 500 gb external backup hard drive and put it at my dad's place, how could I set things up for me to do backups to that drive off-site?
-- josh

steinbej wrote:
Yikes. I found the "remote" directions. Lots of code to write, endless opportunities for screwing up not only my computer but my dad's as well. I don't think that's wise.
I've made it work when I tried in the past but yes, it can be intimidating.
I don't see anything about remote backup with Super Duper. I even checked their discussion forum. Can you point me in the right direction to that functionality? Tx.
you can create a sparse disk image on the remote computer and back up to that. enter "backing up over a network" in Superduper help for details.
-- Josh

Large off site backup - where?

I have close to 1 TB of music that I backup with Time Machine. However, I'd also like to backup the music off site because it is irreplaceable. I see that dropbox has an option for $200/yr. Is that my best option? Approximately how long will it take to do the initial backup? Thanks.

Well. it would depend on what you want your back up to be able to do:
Do you want to be able to boot your computer from it (make a bootable clone)?
Do you just want to full backup (use Time Machine)?
Do you only want your music on it as an extra backup (drag 'n drop) or store the actual library on it (must be tethered to the computer then so it can access the library)?
Here is some excellent info on Time Machine (I don't use it; I have several bootable clones instead):
http://pondini.org/OSX/Home.html
I'd probably have at least 2 bootable clones (which would include the music) as well as a third which just has another copy of the music on it. That'd be the minimum.
As for the rewarding of points: once you've chosen an answer as either helpful or correct, it can't be changed, so your awards of helpful is a done deal.

Off Site Backups?

I have a great deal of sensitive information on my MacBook. Prior to Leopard & Time Machine, I kept regular back ups at work, and weekly backups over the weekend at home.
Does anyone know if Time Machine has the capability of maintaining two separate backups on two separate drives? I created both initial backups already, and I know that I can figure this one out on my own through trial and error, but it takes so long for my initial backup to complete that I would like to know for sure so that I don't have to go through the process all over again.
If it doesn't work, I will probably use Time Machine at work and do a more conventional back up over the weekend at home. I guess I'm just trying to save myself a lot of time and trouble and I certainly appreciate any wisdom that anyone out there can share with me before I try pushing the button myself!
Best Regards to All!

I am sorry that it has taken me this long to add this post as an answer to my own question. After quite a bit of reading and a little bit of experimentation, it is now much clearer to me how Time Machine works, and it is also clear that it can only manage one back up drive at a time, even though that single back up drive can host many different computers running Time Machine. So, if you change your back up drive, it will become an archive with all of your back up data intact, but Time Machine will start over from scratch with the new back up drive, creating its complete back up all over again. This is great in one sense, that being if you want to have archival hard drives and don't mind tying up your computer for the initial back up process to run all over again. But for my purposes, I really want Time Machine to be able to go back as far into time as possible so that I can recover and/or review documents as they were in the past. Therefore switching drives, even from time to time, would not work as a solution for me.
So here's my plan:
• My Time Machine drive (which, by the way, is a big honker and will hold a lot of back ups, especially considering how Time Machine does backups), will remain at the office where I do the most work on my laptop and where files are changed throughout the day, every day.
• I will use DejaVu when I bring the laptop home at night and over the weekend in order to create an off site back up of my data. (I had been using DejaVu previous to my upgrade to Leopard and the advent of Time Machine, so it is a simple matter of continuing to use this particular program for me, but there are many other possibilities out there that will create a "mirror" of your data for off site purposes).
By trial and error I have found that the two programs in no way interfere with each other. When I go home on the weekend, DejaVu knows what files have changed and makes the appropriate back ups. When I plug my Time Machine drive back in at the office, it knows what has changed since the last time it was connected and it picks up right where it left off.
As I said, I did test this out myself, and it does work for me. As I also said, I did a good bit of reading as well. One of the best written, most thorough, and easiest to understand articles, (complete with pictures, I just love pictures!), can be found at Apple Insider:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html&page=1
(Please note that this is the link to page one. The article goes on for several pages and is really a great read!)
Thanks to taalinukko and to Vince DiStefano for their replies and their input. I will continue to monitor this post just in case anyone out there might have any questions for me and my particular application of Time Machine and DejaVu to do regular and off site backups.
Best Regards to All!

Best Practice for 2008R2 DC off site backup

hello.
at the request of the management i am trying to finalize a plan that covers off different potential events that could afflict our domain controllers.
we currently have 2 DC's in our environment 1 holds all FSMO so we have redundancy if 1 goes down and i can use DC promo to build a new one and add it to the domain, then doing meta data clean up if needed.
i have system state backups which will be useful if something happens to AD and i still have the original hardware to restore onto.
however if something horrific happens i lose both dc's and need to restore to new hardware i am dubious of the reliability of these system state backups as i have tested them in the past and often got BSOD issues.
i toyed with the idea of have a 3rd DC hosted off site in a data center, have replication occur to this and then i could use to rebuild new ones onsite if such a disaster were to occur.
any one have any suggestions or ideas on this one, or speak from there own experiences in this subject
Many Thanks

Having a off-site DC is always good, but in the event of a replicated failure it's not going to help, there is situations where you would need to do a forest recovery (for example backing out of a schema update) Then you need to restore a system state
backup of one DC and preferably re-install the others.
Enfo Zipper
Christoffer Andersson – Principal Advisor
http://blogs.chrisse.se - Directory Services Blog

I am trying to decide on a HDD for off site backup

I am trying to decide on a HDD for off site backup, should I use a bus powered drive or brick powered? Should I go cheaper with a powered unit or convenience of a bus powered drive. I would clone my computer and bring it to a friends house. I would do this 2 or 3 times a year just to have an off-site backup of my personal stuff.

How you connect the drive is really what will determine what in my opinion is best. If you connect directly to the iMac then get a brick powered drive. The reason being is iMac's are not known for supplying a lot of power from their USB ports and if you want your backup to be reliable it has to get good power. However if you are using a powered USB hub hanging a bus powered drive should be fine. I also think that if you are going to use the backup as a clone don't get a USB drive, that's just plain not too smart. Yes it would work however the performance would be awful, if you run into a situation where you rely on that drive for a time to run your Mac you'll hate the experience. In that case get a good Firewire 800 drive which will provide acceptable performance, never as good as a SATA drive but decent performance none the less. That being said if you do decide to get a FW800 drive it will be powered by a brick as I don't thing there is such a thing as a bus powered FW800 port.

What off-site, online backup service works best with Aperature?

I would feel more comfortable with off-site backup for my 19,000 photos in iPhoto. I am thinking of moving to Aperature. I would like a service that would restore iPhoto or Aperature easily if my MBP hard drive should fail or corrupt my pictures. There are many from which to choose. CrashPlan looks good but I don't know if it would restore easily. I will appreciate help with this! Thanks!

I personally suggest a redundant back up plan. I use Time Machine and separate additional HDDs to back up data that I feel is important to me.
If you feel that an off site storage is a requirement, then that certainly is you decision. I just don't feel that it is worth that much effort.
I cannot comment specifically on the company you mention, but I have seen some difficulties with other similar services. I suspect that you have a lot of data (GBs) and the question is hoe long the restore would take and what guarantees there are in it's accuracy.
I do find Aperture to be a worthwhile application, but do not expect it to rival Photo Shop. It is a more sophisticate Photo in essence.
Ciao.

DPM Off site backup recommendations for all workloads without using tapes

Hi All
I'm looking for recommendations for off site backups avoiding tapes if at all possible.
My scenario is as follows:
We are soon to be migrating our backups to DPM 2012 R2 and will be backing up all workloads to disk, this will be around 10TB initially but could ramp up to over 30TB as more workloads are brought in.
What we would like to do is remove the need for tapes and shove our backups offsite onto some sort of cloud storage. We've looked at the obvious Azure online option but unfortunately this doesn't support all workloads (just File, SQL and Hyper-V).
We would need a decent retention period (7 years).
We'd like to go as direct as possible to the cloud from DPM without the need to locally double up or stage.
I'm very interested to know what's out there and what are people using.
Cheers!

Yes but...
As it's going to be writing potentially GB/TB of data to the VTL file it might not be the most efficient to go directly across the cloud. There are lots of issues latency, speed, contention, etc. to take in to consideration. Most of the Cloud Storage appliances
like StorSimple, BridgeStor, etc. have the smarts of cope with variables such as above. Once the complete file is on disk moving it to the cloud is relatively easy.
I agree that you'll be duplicating data but it would be far safer to write locally then move to the cloud.
A secondary is a good option too but as you're looking for long term retention, 7 years, then it may be very tricky with file data due to the 64 VSS snapshot limit. For other workloads it would be fine but would require a significant capital investment to
create the infrastructure as DPM doesn't play well with new features like Storage Spaces.

Attempting to set up an off site backup

Hi,
Im attempting to set up an off site back up of the business date from a LaCie Big-Nas storage unit to another LaCie Big-Nas. All going well until I discovered that the BT Hub 3 router is not UPnP-IGD / NAT-PMP compatible? Can I solve this by making some changes or do I need to pick up a new router??
Any help much apprechitaed,
Andy

Thanks Anthony, looks like the HH3 dosent make life any easier! If we cant open the requred ports then it will have to be a couple of new routers I guess?

2x 10.5.2 xServe + raid backup solutions - Suggestions please!

Hello,
I'll give a brief overview of what I'm rolling out. *Limited budget* So keep that in mind
Basically I'm just looking for suggestions on backup solutions for this particular setup. I have been hearing mixed reviews of most backup solutions under 10.5.x... (In 10.4.x server I was relatively confident with Retrospect and had performed restores before).
--2 xServes, One web server, one for local services like mail, OD, AFP, Cal, etc. each has 2x 80gb drive (boot volume + mirror). Advanced server config.
--1x raid configured as raid6 with 4TB useable after formatting and parity. Data (user directory, mail store, calendar, web sites and database, etc) will be on the raid volumes, the 80 gb drives in xserves are only for OS and log files.
--All clients are using MacBook Pro's and most users have minimal data. Most data will be mail and quicktime videos (compressed for web, originals on mini dv tapes).
--MacBook Pro's already live, current server is SBS 2003 and it handles backups via Retrospect.
--Backups will have to be D2D, tape is not an option in this case. This means two external drives for backup (one on site and one off site, cycle on friday). Probably 2TB FW800 for each drive as entire raid isn't being backed up, some of it is scratch storage so 2 TB is plenty for now).
Naturally I want to use time machine but I am hearing of horror stories using time machine to backup advanced server in 10.5. Also seeing issues with cyrus (mail) and time machine (I will be running mail services). In addition, I don't think I could do any sort of cycle with the two external drives using time machine? The lack of configurability in time machine worries me. And finally, I don't know how time machine does with active database' (Ie: sql database for web server, I just don't know if time machine will cause problems when trying to back live database up). If someone has experience with time machine in a similar setup I'd love to hear your thoughts / suggestions.
Alternatively there is retrospect. We already own a license and I am familiar with administering it on 10.4.x. How reliable is it for backing up 10.5.2 clients and 10.5.2 server? Including active databses (Again the web server sql databases, etc? Kind of a pain restoring anything from retrospect (Especially entire server if / when it has to be done) but it was tried and true for me in 10.4.x server installations.
These MacBook pro's will also likely become mobile homes once all is said and done (But currently are not as the xServes are not installed yet). Time machine + mobile home directory seems like a lot of data being backed up that is probably redundant?
To top it all off, until new office is ready (All gigabit when that happens in ~1 year) network is as follows:
Servers have 100 mbit full duplex connection
Clients have 10mbit half duplex (This is where time machine really frightens me with hourly client backup).
Considering above, I can either:
A: Run proactive backup script from retrospect for all clients and then nightly backup for select raid volume contents + server boot volumes.
B: Not backup clients directly via retrospect and only backup contents of the raid volume (Which is where the mobile homes will be stored). Mobile home sync would be set to occur on login / logout only (Considering 10mbit client connections, I don't want active or user initiated sync heh).
Thoughts / suggestions? Thanks in advance, any suggestions are much appreciated. Hardware is set in stone but backup solution is not so most aspects of backup solution can be changed =)

First of all, thanks for your reply!
Well I should clarify in that I wasn't going to operate "network" homes and that they were just going to be the mobile homes with sync only occurring at login / logout. Even then, I think I'd run in to issues with the 10base-T for the client systems. The servers are on 100base-T full duplex. Currently All of the Windows systems do the same and logging in / out isn't too terrible but I couldn't imagine actually running the home directories off the server on 10base-T.
Do you still think mobile homes would be too much with just the login / logout sync? If so, I'll simply avoid this option until we get our new building and gigabit networking all around in the next year.
You're correct in that all clients will be running 10.5.2.
If I am not running mobile homes, I suppose the easiest way then is to in fact backup clients via time machine to the raid volume and then backup the entire raid volume (Hence all of our sites, compressed video files and databases to a large external drive (Maybe I'll get a couple 3 or 4 TB raid drives instead... lol). Naturaly I'd select the scratch disk directories and tell time machine to ignore them. Only issue there being that I may run in to space concerns like you say. If it becomes a huge problem and apple still hasn't made TM more configurable by then, I could use the time machine editor app or modify the intervals myself. I'd rather not and will only do this if it becomes an issue
From what I can gather, time machine is not making complete duplicates of an active database (MS Entourage in this case) and is only backing up the changes. I was worried about how it handled this and whether it would detect a change and just backup the entire database again (Which would be a nightmare if it did this for our web directories as they have active databases running).
Do you know of time machine will wreak havoc with active databases (Like the ones our websites use, a couple small sql databases and one larger one).
I think time machine would work well with the method you suggested. So I can just set it to backup all clients to the raid volume and then setup time machine to backup the raid volume to the external disk? For my off site... I suppose I could just bring in the second identical external drive every Friday and copy the time machine backup database from the on site backup drive on to it and then get it out of there each evening.
As for backing up the servers themselves, they will not be storing much of anything and most everything will be pointed to the raid volume (Hence the 80GB drives). Because of this, the data on the servers themselves will not change THAT much compared to the raid volume which will change drastically every day so full backups of the servers is fine. Perhaps just setting psyncX (assuming it works in 10.5) to backup the 80GB boot volume for each server would be best? I could just set psyncX to backup each server boot volume to the same external drive the raid volume is backing up to and then each friday just copy the data from the on site drive to the external, killing two birds with one stone. (Tape would make this all easier but it isn't gonna happen in this case sigh).
I worry about the cyrus / mail issues I'm reading about on servers running time machine though.

Rsync or other backup solution- single source multiple target?

Seems from http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions … ly-774225/ that I can't do what I want, but I thought I'd ask as well.
My laptop hard disc is going to be backed up to two external hard discs (regular script). What I do right now is run two separate rsync commands, but of course this means that the data (all 300+ GB of it, currently) needs to be read twice. Seems it'd be much more efficient if the data were read once and then written to both external hard discs.
It doesn't seem from the above link and other google resources that this is possible. Can anyone suggest an alternative short of scripting a file-by-file cache?
Last edited by ngoonee (2013-10-31 01:33:22)

cfr wrote:
Doesn't this partially undermine the point of doing two backups? I realise one is off site and that they are on separate devices which rules out some sources of corruption/loss but if you run the backup as you wish and something bad happens to the source during the backup, you are likely to end up with three corrupted copies rather than only two.
I don't manage to do this as I only have one complete backup but I thought that best practice involved not touching one backup while the other backup was being created (or restored or...). That way, you always have one "known good" backup whatever happens.
EDIT: not "whatever happens" but "whichever of any of a larger number of possible catastrophes occurs". Obviously, the third copy could be on a device that dies or explodes or gets drowned by a peeved goldfish at just that moment when mice eat your source during a backup, thus corrupting your other two copies. But you can only plan so far...
This isn't my complete backup solution. I have two hard discs in one location (what I'm asking about here) and another one at a different location. The reason I have two is simply because I have a spare which doesn't have any other use, and it may as well be put to use in this way.
Besides, if something happens to the source, using --backup-dir means I'll still have the last known good copy anyway (not taking into account the backup which is at the different location.

Backup Solutions for our iMac

We just narrowly escaped losing our hard drive due to maxing it out - 319GB or 320 used. The reason? I procrastinated creating a backup solution. Now we need to move forward and am looking for suggestions as to the best route. As background, our system currently consists of:
(1) Macbook Air (2012)
(1) iMac (mid 2007, Intel)
(1) 2wiregateway wireless router (AT&T Broadband)
Online back-up via Backblaze (am considering switching to Crashplan or Carbonite)
We need a solution that will provide:
automatic wireless back-ups of both machines though I could hardwire our desktop if need be - TC?
external disk storage for our media (e.g., photos, music and video files) - WD, SG, IOM linked to TC, needs to be backed up using TM
media server - access from Macbook Air, iPad (future), iPhone (future), any wireless device playing iTunes; e.g., Denon receiver (future need)
I purchased and tried to set-up a Seagate GoFlex Home option but the wireless set-up via the 2wire has been difficult and I've had no luck with linking it as a drive for Time Machine. I plan to return based on feedback (regarding my set-up options). Like everyone, we want to 'future proof', however, we're NOT large media purchasers so excessive storage is not an issue - mostly photo files. We're mainly focused on ease, durability and costs.
This is what i was thinking:
automatic wireless back-ups of both machines - Time Machine/Time Capsule ($300+)
external disk storage for our media - external harddrive (WD, SG, IOM) connected via Ethernet to TC or as it's a store server, hardwire this one (firewire) to the desktop. This too will need to be backed up using Time Machine ($150+)
media server - ? Again, secondary future need
Thoughts?

Thanks for all of the feedback. I've sat down and drawn out an updated solution (see below). I think this will meet all of our needs but would love all and any feedback including on my drive selections/options. Our modified 'need' list.
external disk storage for our media (e.g., photos, music and video files) [External Hard Drive FW800 connection]
automatic wireless data back-ups of both machines [Time Capsule]
bootable local back-up of both machines [External Hard Drive with Super Duper linked to Time Capsule]
media server - access from Macbook Air, iPad (future), iPhone (future) [iCloud]
network printer connection [Time Capsule]
off-site data back-ups of both machines [Back Blaze/Carbonite]
Does this make sense? Overkill? Thoughts regarding Iomega drives?

What's the best external backup solution for the 2011 MacBook Air?

I'm really considering moving to a new 2011 13" MacBook Air for my primary machine and I'm curious to know what ya'll might suggest for the ideal backup solution.
Currently I use a Firewire 800 drive with my MacBook Pro consisting of a Bootable OS backup, Media volume backup, Time Machine backup + blank volume for files.
The current external options available —Thunderbolt release date anyone?—are: USB 2.0 and Time Capsule. Lately—and a first up until now—I've started thinking about potentialy moving my backup solution online. I'm curious if anyone has experience with an affordable, simple, online solution?
Also, don't suppose any kind of storage solutions could utilize the SD card slot in any way?
I look forward to hearing about your backup solutions!
All the best,
—Jordan

Redundancy is more important than speed when it comes to backup.
I like a have a clone of my internal drive to an external drive of the same size. If your internal drive fails you can boot from your external clone. I use SuperDuper!
If your data is important to you, you should keep a backup off-site and have more than one backup set.
Cloud storage is an option if you have fast broadband and small data volumes.
I like the simplicity of Time Machine with Time Capsule for incremental and version backups.
Rather than invest in Thunderbolt (expensive and fast), invest in redundancy (cheap, slow).

NON 3rd party offsite server backup solutions....?

Can anyone recommend a method of an off-site server backup solution that doesn't involve a 3rd party company?
I'm new to server admin and the company I work for is sitting on tons of really, really confidential and sensitive data that we ardently protect on-site, but with all the inclemental weather we've been getting lately (and horror stories from other local businesses regarding their server rooms flooding and such) we've been considering options for offsite backups, but don't want an outside source to have any access to our server contents/data/info in way way shape or form (as in: our backups would be on one of their servers---we don't want to go that route).
Right now we CCC everything everyday to an on-site external drive and then CCCing the server backups onto another external hard drive which then gets taken off-site to the admin's home and brought back in when a backup is going to be made (about once a week for that one).
Any thoughts?
We're absolutely not above buying a second server and running it out of somebody's house for this purpose...but the details of how to configure it as a backup server aren't very clear to me.
Any help is appreciated!
Thanks!
Is there a better way to do this?

ssh/rsync works well for me at home -- local server with a backup copy plus a copy on my brother's server nearly 3000 miles away. Of course, I recommend shipping physical media containing an initial backup to the offsite backup location first to save on bandwidth and time. (Depending on your connection.)
My script is basically:
{quote}
backup()
    src=$1
    dst=$2
    rsync -abz --delete --delete-excluded $src $dst
    echo "Backup starts: `/bin/date`"
    echo ""
    backup /Volumes/backup/Backups.backupdb/computername/Latest/ \
        onsite_server:computername
    backup /Volumes/backup/Backups.backupdb/computername/Latest/ \
        offsite_server:computername
    echo ""
    echo "Backup ends: `/bin/date`"
} > backup.log
rsync -abqz backup.log offsite_server:backup.log
ssh offsite_server "~/bin/backup-complete.sh"
{quote}
backup-complete.sh just emails me using the contents of backup.log as the email body. I used keys for authentication.

Large Volume Backup Solution?

Hello,
I'm investigating some solutions to backing up a large and extensive digital film library. We are a online movie distributor and looking to build a backup solution to our library.
We are currently at 7TB of space.
Files formats include: MOV, MP4, M4V, JPG, PDF, PSD, PNG
We expect to be using 12TB of space by the end of the year.
We expenct to be filling 1-2TB of space every month in 2013.
If we set up a FTP/SMB NAS at an external site, is any recommended Apple software that can manage a scheduled back up of the above?
Do you have any recommendations on a expandable NAS?
If not, any cheap cloud storage solutions that can manage dozens of TB of storage in a year?
Thank you.

The amount of data you are talking about will be difficult to manage remotely.
I did a Bad Blocks scan recently on a FireWire-attached 3TB backup drive, and it took over 12 hours just to read every block.
My recommendation for remote backup of that scale of data is to do the backup locally, then put the drives (or the entire NAS unit) in your car and take it off site.

Backup solutions on/off-site

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