[DavidBlum12]

I need a good backup solution for my Windows Small Business Servers and Windows 7 computers. I’d like to do regular backups once a day, stored locally and then at least once a week do a backup that should be stored offsite. Can anyone recommend such software?
I’ve made a little bit of Google research and I’ve narrowed it down to Paragon, Acronis and Praetorian Guard… I've heard varying things about them so it is very hard to decide. It’d be great if you can give me feedback.
Thanks in advance!

[KatyNN1]

How many computers do you want to back up?

DavidBlum12, on 18 April 2012 - 02:12 AM, said:

I’ve made a little bit of Google research and I’ve narrowed it down to Paragon, Acronis and Praetorian Guard… I've heard varying things about them so it is very hard to decide. It’d be great if you can give me feedback.
Thanks in advance!

I have heard of these three tools but don't have any experience with them. A friend of mine uses Praetorian Guard in his office and he is quite pleased with the quality/ price he gets. You can download the trial and see if it fits your needs.

[DavidBlum12]

I have 15 PCs but intend to buy more. I've downloaded Praetorian Guard's trial but unfortunately, I'm not very good at IT and I had a difficulty with the installation. I need some advice...is watching your friend from somewhere how to install the product? Was it easy to configure?

[smax013]

DavidBlum12, on 18 April 2012 - 02:12 AM, said:

I need a good backup solution for my Windows Small Business Servers and Windows 7 computers. I’d like to do regular backups once a day, stored locally and then at least once a week do a backup that should be stored offsite. Can anyone recommend such software?
I’ve made a little bit of Google research and I’ve narrowed it down to Paragon, Acronis and Praetorian Guard… I've heard varying things about them so it is very hard to decide. It’d be great if you can give me feedback.
Thanks in advance!

You might take a look at Retrospect. While I have not used it in an environment like yours, I have used it for my own home network. My dad currently uses it to backup his single computer mainly because it does allow you the option of backing up in "native file format" (i.e. allows you to go in the backup drive in Windows and find individual files rather than having to use the Retrospect program.

They do have versions that are designed to backup a server and client computers on the network (you install a client program on each machine so that it can backup over the network).

And it can backup to things like tape drives (if you still want to go that route rather than a hard drive).

[Evildave]

Actually, if you use one of the 'professional' windoze versions for your network clients, you have a backup that can go over the network automatically, already, that you should be able to schedule. Unfortunately, for 'lesser' skews of windoze, it won't backup over network.
Programs->Maintenance->Backup & Restore

For additional help, google it.

Though if you're not scared of scripting, it's also trivial...

Make a batch, add invocations of 'xcopy /h /e /r /d /i /c /k /y srcdir backupdir' to it.

For each computer, modify a backup.bat file like this...

@echo off
echo Backing up stuff
set xcopyflags=/h /e /r /d /i /c /k /y
set mybackupvol=/path/to/mounted/backup/volume/thiscomputersfolder
xcopy %xcopyflags% C:\Users %mybackupvol%
rem Add additional paths, like the above path.
rem xcopy %xcopyflags% C:\whatever\else %mybackupvol%

Then under Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Task Scheduler, schedule a task that calls your batch. Try to stagger the days/times when the backups happen, so they don't overwhelm the network. If you're familiar with scripting at all, this will be the most flexible and powerful way to do it. You can even store the batch files on the server, where they're convenient to update. After the initial backup (very time consuming) you should be able to stagger them an hour apart without colliding.

Either way you do it, the first time the backups are run, it will take 'forever' to finish, as it will back up 'everything' you reference, but thereafter, they should usually finish pretty quickly, as it will only copy incrementally.

[Evildave]

BTW, if you want more options, a GNU 'rsync' implementation for windows will be 'better' than xcopy, as you have more control over how the files are transferred, and an rsync server can manage everything more efficiently.

Also, beware of very large backup files, like virtual machines, that are always 'different'. You may want to schedule a 'different' backup that includes them, to be done less frequently, as they can be awfully time consuming, and usually don't change much (if they're special purpose, as they usually are).

The scripting and scheduling can become kind of elaborate, but as I mentioned, you do have complete control, though some commercial software package may make it infinitely easier to manage. But I don't do things that way, personally, so I'm not familiar with any.

As an alternative to scheduling, you may want to hook a 'shutdown' script. Whenever anyone shuts down their computer, it runs the backup, first. This will prevent the backup from being too invasive, as it only happens when they're 'done' for the day.
http://en.kioskea.ne...up-and-shutdown

To prevent everyone leaving and shutting down at the same time from clobbering the network, you might want to come up with some sort of networked semaphore to allow 'n' instances of backup batch to happen at one time. How to do this with a windows cmd batch, I don't know. You would most likely need little win32 command line program just to wait on it. Opening a network file in 'exclusive' (un-shared) mode, in a loop (with a sleep) might do it. When you finally get the handle, you have a lock on the 'backup', and then you can invoke and wait for cmd to finish the batch file, then exit. If your computer crashes or shuts down, or the app otherwise aborts, the file access will be 'unlocked' for the next greedy little process to wait to grab it, automatically.

Linux/UNIX's BASH has tools to control parallelization (i.e. 'flock'), but Windows' CMD does not (as far as I know). Though it's likely one of WIndows' MANY scripting language du jours has some form of locking like this, but I'm not very familiar with anything besides CMD and raw Win32 SDK.

So there are strengths and weaknesses to my options. Also, the Windows backup certainly doesn't give a tinker's cuss how many backups go off at the same time, either. It can be scheduled, staggered, but it's still capable of clobbering your network drive server with too many reads/writes.

[KatyNN1]

DavidBlum12, on 23 April 2012 - 04:21 AM, said:

I have 15 PCs but intend to buy more. I've downloaded Praetorian Guard's trial but unfortunately, I'm not very good at IT and I had a difficulty with the installation. I need some advice...is watching your friend from somewhere how to install the product? Was it easy to configure?

My friend is an IT guy and he didn’t have any problems with installing. Perhaps, you can see the training videos. If you still have problems with it afterwards, you can send me PM.