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Storagecraft ShadowProtect. VM and physical solution, works perfect. Has awesome feature called VirtualBoot which allows you to boot up any backup as a VM on your laptop / desktop machine.
Software wise nothing happens, but hardware wise is breaks down. Here is a article i found by a quick google search.(there is a table at the bottom of the page if you dont want to read.
The short live of such common hardware is also why backup History bunkers (if a nuclear strike happens you can still figure out what happend before the war even a few generations after the strike) Use 8 mm film which has a lifespan of 80 years minimum when in a good place and properly lubed.
> I would still rather know that if I ever wipe my Xbox or Clear some space of a hard drive that I can still Play/Watch the things I've paid for long after the download servers are gone.
Non-digital media has a shelf life.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/data-storage-lifespan/
So even if you have a physical copy, there is no guaranteed that you can play that media far into the future.
Besides, what's stops you from moving a game from one digital storage to the next ad infinitum, the same way you would have to copy the physical version of media to prevent degradation?
No that wouldn't work. You would have to pass them to the validation method to even get it to send out information. The encryption is not only 4 digits, that pass is 4 digits. When you dump out the data, that's all you are getting, the data, it's not functional.
I think you have a misconception of how encryption works.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/5-common-encryption-algorithms/
This is pretty basic, but it more or less tells you why it's not a 4 digit pin that can just decode this. Also, if all encryption standards used the same key generation each time, then encryption would be really fucking dumb. I can't remember what the chance of RSA encryption passing you the same generated algorithm as somebody else is, but it's fucking insanely unlikely.
We use ShadowProtect to a NAS then ImageManager for the StorageCraft cloud sync. It's pretty bad ass.
http://www.storagecraft.com/products/storagecraft-cloud-services
I doubt a phone can pull that much -- a high-current charger is something like 2A, 5V, so maximum 10 W. And in my experience, even when heavily loaded, a plugged in tablet will still charge (albeit slowly). So max power draw must be less than or in the order of 10 W. So sure, power-efficiency-wise, ARM beats the crap out of x86, which is why the server market is starting to seriously look at ARM: http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/arm-servers/ If your job scales well with number of cores (as anything BOINC has to do), ARM is great.
The problem is rather the mobile aspect, a battery powered device. Most people would want their phone to charge ASAP when put in the charger, not produce a lot of heat (which is not really adequately cooled) and charge slowly. So it's becomes a lot of effort (for both the user and the developers, who have to target yet another platform) for relatively little gain. But I don't really know, maybe it is still OK - that is why I'm asking :)
Can you clarify what exactly is the issue, why do you have to de-dup on client-side, especially if you have ImageManager for free that consolidates all the backups and then, if necessary replicates it to offsite? Sounds to me like you didn't think trough the backup process correctly. You want to have all the servers backed up on a storage / server with ImageManager which then consolidates them.
http://www.storagecraft.com/products/storagecraft-imagemanager
edit: TBH, i've never heard someone switch from SP to Acronis, only vice versa : )
Going to dawn the flame suit..... Ok. ready.
RAID 5 is ok when using SSD's for reasons fairly well explained in many areas of the internet.
For spinning rust, I'd never use RAID 5 again, specially with large disks.
RAID 10 is what I typically default to anymore unless I can have a good justification for using anything else. RAID 6 gives more capacity, RAID 10 gives more performance.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/practical-raid-decision-making/
The battery wouldn't work at all - they degrade and leak after a while, so it wouldn't matter whether you charged it up or not.
In terms of software, chances are the memory (flash based) would be dead or unreadable after that long. Various sources give the useable shelf-life of flash memory as about ten years, e.g.:
Finally, the phone itself would probably be useless as a phone, since the communication standard would have changed completely within that timeframe. To use a real-world example, an old analogue phone would still power up, but there's no analogue network left for it to connect to.
So it's for failover?
Are you saying that the RODC is running at the same abstraction layer as the HyperV host? All of this is running off of a single baremetal server? And isn't RODC exactly that, read only? How are you going to be replicating AD info off of it in the event your DC goes down? What's your plan in the event of hardware failure?
You'd be better off with a robust backup system like ShadowProtect's HeadStart Restore (http://www.storagecraft.com/support/book/shadowcontrol-imagemanager-user-guide/imagemanager-overview/headstart-restore-scenarios - specifically, check out the third use-case regarding Virtual Standby Server). I've also heard good things about Veeam, but don't have personal experience with it.
Shadowprotect for local backups and then ImageManger (by same company, free product that verifies, consolidates and replicates backup) for offsite replication. It's rock solid, I wouldn't trust anything else with something serious like backing up 100 different client servers.
Backup everything and replace the drive.
About 5% of HDDs are expected to fail during the first year, nothing you can do about it.
Yes. Tapes are much more reliable for very long term storage. A typical HDD will only last about 3-5 years max, where tapes can last 10+.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/data-storage-lifespan/
Also, tapes haven't reached their maximum capacity yet, but it is estimated to be about 35TB. So for very extended offline storage, something like a medical record, it would be the best answer.
We use Storagecraft's Shadowprotect at work, I had a VSS related issue a month or so ago.
This Link may help you out, the only shadowprotect specific bits are making sure shadowprotect isn't doing any backups and making sure the services it uses are set to automatic.
The rest of it is on how to check if all the vss writers are in a stable state (vssadmin list writers) and how to manually reset the VSS state.
I had this issue on 2008 R2.
Check the state of the VSS writers, then go from there.
Ninja edit: Looks like you already checked the state of the writers. Anecdote left for posterity
vConverter is great as a P2V, but not as a V2P. I've actually got a custom bootable DVD that one of my vendors makes for this. They've bundled and scripted together several tools, but the one that really does the heavy lifting is StorageCraft. http://www.storagecraft.com/index.php
The key features you're probably going to use are:
Restore or migrate backup images to and from physical systems and virtual environments (P2V, V2P and V2V).
Hardware Independent Restore (HIR) of backup images to different systems (P2P).
Bootable recovery CD provides automatic hardware detection and network support.
So here's how this process has worked for me. Your mileage may vary.
I'm going to assume you've already imaged the virtual server's disk volumes onto the physical server's. If not, go ahead and do so.
Boot your DL360 off their CD.
Start VNC server. Go back to sit in your comfy chair (or on your couch if you can port forward to your house).
Let storagecraft do it's thing. Read the manual obviously, but essentially what it will do is go through and scan all the existing drivers, strip them out, scan the hardware it is currently running on, and install those drivers. For a server that old and common, I'd bet they will already be on the disk. If it runs into hardware it doesn't have a driver for, it will prompt you with the equivalent of the new hardware wizard prompting you. All you have to do is click 'have disk' and plug in a flash drive with that driver.
That's the skinny version. Check those guys out. Their support is pretty top notch, and they have licensing options that include things like "2 weeks while I pull my hair out fucking fighting with this stupid vendor"
Good luck!
Here's an interesting article highlighting the topic of old and outdated technology that is still in use simply because it's easier to keep using it than to upgrade.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/aging-gracefully-5-examples-of-old-technology-still-in-use-today/
We're still using outdated 1950s computing technology in a ridiculous amount of places, mostly in large enterprises that don't want to spend the manpower and money to update. But that presents an even bigger problem than the 2038 problem, since many of the people who work on these systems are reaching retirement and the younger generation of computer scientists and software developers aren't interested in learning ancient technology just for the sake of keeping archaic behemoths up and running. The last of the COBOL programmers are going to be retiring soon and there's not going to be anyone to take their place.
We are already beginning to see a major paradigm shift from maintaining old systems with old technology to keeping them up to date with the latest tech. The old paradigm worked in the 20th century when newer and better languages and frameworks weren't being invented every year. Now you always have to be on the watch for the next big thing. In the next 20 years I can see these century old systems being phased out in favor of newer more efficient systems. It's a new millennium, get with the times or get out of the way.
Unpowered data storage is still in the realm of 10-30 years with a lot of claims about magnetic tape being viable on the order of 100 years. There is no long term storage except for one product, the M-disk, which is an optical CD or DVD / Blu-ray format which uses a different layer and more powerful laser, and claims data integrity in the range of 1000 years.
Go find a ten year old floppy and try to read it. Or dig out a vhs and try to play it. It will be all fuzzy - they movie will still be there, but if it were digital, it would be so full of errors it would not play.
Magnetic storage degrades. Plastic goes foggy. Most Cds ever sold were only rated for 10 years. If you are depending on digital media to last longer than that, you are going to get a nasty surprise.
Can they make them last longer - sure. Do they? Nope.
Don't believe me - read this: http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/data-storage-lifespan/
I can vouch for StorageCraft. They have new integration with VCenter - http://www.storagecraft.com/support/book/shadowcontrol-user-guide/vmware-vcenter-plug
I really like ShadowControl for reporting / monitoring ShadowProtect backups https://www.storagecraft.com/products/storagecraft-shadowcontrol
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/how-does-google-prepare-for-disaster-they-create-their-own/
Google does some pretty interesting tests like this as well but even takes it beyond randomly shutting servers off.
Just basic stuff off the top of my head
N-Able 1. Custom Service Templates 2. Custom Rules for Desktop / Servers for maintenance windows 3. Root level notifications for main issues such as CPU, Disk, Agent Status/Connectivity etc 4. Custom Views (ESXi Hosts as an example) 5. Flushing out disconnected desktops using last checked in date > 90 days 6. Upgrade Agent / Probes one customer at a time after initial upgrade. Use to be a lot of issues around cpu spikes etc. 7. Use downtime windows with maintenance plans/script tasks to avoid notifications 8. Create an after hours user whos time falls after hours, use a txt message service which accepts emails. Set this as the primary email address. You now have a SMS txt alert service (only done in nable). 9. Don't become a beta tester unless you are an experienced N-Able user.
AV Defender (Currently Bit Defender) 1. Don't do network scanning/USB scanning. Can cause huge lock ups 2. Set weekly scans, or daily quick scans using custom rules (same place you set maintenance windows) 3. Set up a report to email to you daily. You really need Report Manager to get good reporting here 4. Set up notification on behavior scan event and security event (this will be a virus)
Shadow Protect 1. Updates can be downloaded here http://www.storagecraft.com/en-ca/downloads/software-updates
I've found direct connect to use useless. I use RDP for servers and we manually login to workstations using Log Me In Rescue. I highly recommend it.
That's all for now I think... ;)
We use ShadowProtect to a NAS then ImageManager for the StorageCraft cloud sync. It's pretty bad ass.
http://www.storagecraft.com/products/storagecraft-cloud-services
One theory from an article on io9.com explains that there are about 100 billion neurons, and each is capable of making about 1,000 connections that represent 1,000 synapses (synapses do the work of data storage). If you multiply each of the 100 billion neurons by the 1,000 synapses, you get 100 trillion data points, or 100 terabytes of info. The problem with this theory is that each synapse could potentially hold more or less than the one byte of information assumed in this formulation. my source: http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/if-the-human-brain-were-a-hard-drive-how-much-storage-capacity-would-it-have/
I just had a look, the SPD Recovery environment can mount network drives, so if your hardware is supported you can do a direct recovery from the NAS. > If you are restoring the image from a network location, start the Network Configuration utility and map a drive to the network location.
To check if your hardware is supported, boot into the recovery and try and configure the network. (and mount a network share from another computer if you have one)
Personally, I use Acronis True Image.
I actually like Macrium Reflect a bit more, but I already had a copy of Acronis. Another great product to look into (if you're willing to spend a little) is StorageCraft ShadowProtect. I just can't justify spending twice as much as the other products I mentioned though, since it's not actually twice as good. I'd still rate it as the best out there though.
One option is to do "image level backups". It basically saves the entire state of the machine, and if you continue to do incremental backups, you can pick a state in time, and restore your machine from there (again the entire state of the machine, not just data).
I know a lot of other people use Acronis, I use ShadowProtect Desktop on my personal machine, and have nothing but good things to say about it.
What version of Windows and SQL server are you using? Examples of non-VSS applications include
> I hadn't heard of Promise Pegasus and am admittedly not too up to date on stuff like that.
I'm not an expert on RAID stuff either. The Pegasus got good reviews and had the specs I needed.
> that 24TB looks mighty good.
That's a lot if data! Mine is only 4x3TB which in RAID 5 gives me 9TB to play with.
> This may be a silly question but does everything run much faster off the Pegasus than it would if you were working from your internal hdd or a regular external?
I don't have an internal HDD, but an internal SSD would be faster. I'm not sure whether RAID 5 is faster or slower than a single 7200rpm drive. I tried to look it up and learned that RAID 5 is no longer recommended... Guess I'm doing it wrong.
For the past few years my attitude to gear has been 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. It feels like around 2012-2013 photography and computer gear reached a level that I'm perfectly happy with. I did buy a D810 but the D800 I got in 2012 still works fine too, half a decade later. I'm not sure when I got the RAID but it was probably around that time.
> PS: next time you're in the US, swing by the studio and say hello :)
Send me a PM with your details. I'm mostly in Europe and Australia but I never know where work takes me.
That's not true first of all. I can tell you've never dealt with tape backups. That's irrelvant to the data it has on it though. The issue is mainly it can't retain data that long.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/data-storage-lifespan/
"manufacturers claim that tape can last up to thirty years, which can make it a useful medium for archiving. The problem with that number is that magnetic tapes will only last that long under absolutely optimum environmental conditions, meaning they need to be kept in a place where both humidity and temperatures are stable. A more realistic lifespan for magnetic tape is about ten to twenty years, although they are more susceptible to wear and tear if used frequently."
I'm going to say left outside on a mountain is less than ideal.
Flash memory "wears out" by writing. Each write action to a flash drive takes it another step to its grave. When the flash drive finally dies, it will usually (not always) go all at once, so that you can't recover any data by any means.
Do you want the BEST option, or the best CHEAPEST option, or the least COMPLEX option that will do the job? :P
Windows Backup uses images these days that you can just mount and get data out of in case of failure, or restore your entire computer. Since Windows 7 it's actually got pretty decent.
If you're after something better, look at the Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE, it's powerful and does what you want.
If you're after something very simple and does all you want and more, have a look at StorageCraft Shadow Protect
> VMware Player's networking options stink
What? I am not looking to get into a pissing contest but VMware has the exact same networking options. They are literately no different. Both offer NATing, Bridging, and Host Only.
> Hyper-V's lack of acceleration
Hyper-V is a layer 1 virtual instance, it should be running on bare metal, not on a layer 2 host. Your acceleration options will be running VM's directly from the metal of the machine, versus running on a host that the bottle necks the resources to be shelled out again to the VM.
Here. This might help in furthering your understanding.
http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/battle-of-free-virtualization-tools-vmware-vs-virtualbox/
Relative to the rest of the government it is small, $12B is less the 0.4% of the entire US budget last year. That one department handles the money that finances the rest of the entire system.
>When you can look at a number that big and think it's small, you'll overpay on rent and lock yourself into 50 year contracts, you'll expense all your lunches, you'll buy the better chairs, you'll pay for all the extended warranties, you'll handle equipment without care, you'll take unnecessary business trips, you'll start giving out bonuses left and right (to employees that don't even pay their own taxes).
Maybe that's what you'd do, but prove its actually going on in the IRS.
Half the tax data is still stored in magnetic real-to-real tape. You think their problem is budgeting?
>IRS handles 175,000,000 returns a year, so I've already cut your workload of 321,500,000 in half.
A simple Wikipedia search says that number is 234,000,000, so I was wrong, about $50 to do each of those.
Of course that doesn't even account for the fact that not all tax returns will be the same. How much time do you think it takes to go over even a small business' tax return?
Most companies of that size will have resumption plans for disasters, particularly tech companies. Google actually regularly practices this sort of thing. How well prepared they are and how geo-redundant they are will play out in how their operations are affected.
Some companies would have a really hard time staying open, others would not be affected much. There's various examples of this in companies that were affected by the destruction of the WTCs on 9/11 if you google it a bit.
Doing my homework... 2 to 5 years? Yes, with DVDs that I or my daughter use daily. 10 to 25 years? My oldest DVDs are 10 years old and still readable, but I really don't know what causes a DVD to degrade to the point of being unreadable.
> According to the US National Archives, CDs and DVDs have very similar lifespans. Generally, unrecorded (blank) CDs and DVDs have a shelf-life of five to ten years. The experiential life expectancy of recorded CDs and DVDs is between two and five years, though based on manufacturer claims, ten to twenty five years, or even longer, isn’t unprecedented. In any case, using very conservative numbers will reduce the risk of losing data. > > These numbers also depend on environmental factors and how often the disc is used. Any optical media is extremely susceptible to damage because there is little protection on the readable surface—just think about how many CDs of yours have been scratched through regular use, it happens to all of us.
Have you looked into a partnership with StorageCraft?
Sited from their website, about half way down. source
> * Do more than $5,000 in sales quarterly and get our technician’s tool, ShadowProtect IT Edition, free
> * Do more than $1,000 in quarterly sales and get it at a discount ($299 per quarter)
Plus as a partner, better help when contacting support, get response 2 hrs or less PDF source
No i talk about discs who are in perfect store condition in your shelf. Have you clicked the link i had added?
> According to the Optical Storage Technology Association (OSTA), "manufacturers claim life spans ranging from 30 to 100 years for DVD, DVD-R and DVD+R discs and up to 30 years for DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM".✝
for Blue-Rays itself
> Manufacturers claim a life span from 100 up to 150 years for Blu-ray disks.
And we clearly do not talk about them dying from today to tomorrow. They loose their quality steady over the years, practically starting as soon as you buy it, or as soon they got produced. Its not platinum or something actually durable they get made of
- Here is also a more detailed answer on a .gov domain
- Also this article that explains how basically any other medium would be better
Edit:// Answering to your second paragraph. No this is not at all likely to happen. I run a raid so if one disk dies there always is the other one with the exact same data, both are high quality disk with low changes to fail at once. I have a external backup disc, and i backup this one compressed and encrypted on external cloud services. Your CD will start loosing quality visible at max in 20 years. (Keep in mind that the actual life span of a CD/DVD often is mentioned as in 3-5 years, and they just more or less randomly get to their 100 as well). Also my internet is faster than my CD drive, so it is usually WAY FASTER for me to just download something instead of ripping on my own.
For me personally there is no reasonable thought that what lead to prefer any CD mediums.
The problem isn't the medium, it is how long it takes for the retrieval of the information from this form of storage.
Firstly, good backups are of utmost importance, especially redundant copies stored on at least two different types of media.
Second, get rid of that RAID 5 array while you're ahead and go with RAID 10 (preferred) or RAID 6.
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/262196-one-big-raid-10-the-new-standard-in-server-storage
sorry for the delay, are you talking for home or enterprise? For home a tape backup for most people could be more of a hassle due to the cost of getting startup equipment (my research found about 1500ish for a drive, although the tape drives themselves are not terribly expensive) and something like either cloud backups (given you don't plan to backup too much) or backing up to and external drive could be a decent solution. Honestly my best suggestion is if you have a PC that can support a few HDD's, I would get 3+ and put them in raid 5 (here is an article detailing the differences of the raids) , or even having a RAID'ed NAS will make your data the most accessible and reliable and on the bonus, most NAS's will have an indicator light on a hard drive if one fails so that you can replace it and have it re-replicate the data (if in an acceptable raid). However if you are looking for longer term data storage, here is an article on data storage lifespans. All of this being said, until mass flash storage is cost effective the cloud or hdd raid options would most likely be the best options available to you. I hope this helps, if there is any other questions you have feel free to ask.
Everyone on ServerFault would seem to disagree http://serverfault.com/questions/3750/relative-failure-rates-for-hardware-components
StorageCraft's server also places power supplies in 2nd place for failures. http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/hardware-failure/
I've been a fan of StorageCraft for a while now, but they still owe me a hat.
FYI: There are programs such as StorageCraft that will make an image of your computer. You can easily run an image nightly (or on any schedule you want) to an external hard drive.
It's easier to reinstall your entire system should you need to and,
You can do a granular file recovery should you ever need to just recover individual file(s), but not reinstall your entire OS.
I know this isn't going to help you for today's event, but hopefully you'll look into implementing this, or a similar product, for future events.
I highly recommend StorageCraft, however it's not exactly cheap. We currently use it on a number of our clients' sites and haven't had a single problem that wasn't caused by PEBKAC.
Conversely, BackupExec has given us nothing but migraines and heart failure.
In the future you may want to use this: http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_desktop.php for incremental backups and restorations. We use it on our SBS 2010 and Terminal Server and it works well enough and is very configurable. Also woe is the tech who modifies without backup.
ShadowProtect Desktop has saved my ass (and data) more times than I can count. You can, in addition to all the usual backup and restore functions, mount the backup as a virtual drive. It's a fairly expensive program, but well worth it. I wouldn't be without it because it's proved it's value to me many times over.