Halloween scares - Disaster Recovery

I love Halloween, I always have.  Something about being scared - it could just be an excuse to watch startling teenage slasher-flicks late at night, but I digress...

Disaster Recovery is a topic that there are as many opinions on as there are ghouls on Halloween. There are so many products out there and so many different ways to backup - Tape, Disk, NAS, SAN, fibre-channel,  offsite, incremental, Differential, Full, transactional, Image, file level, and brick level. I wont single-out any vendors but I do see allot of these big name backup service providers playing to the business-owners lack of understanding on what it actually takes to get humpty-dumpty back together again in the event something actually blows-up.

These vendors send in their $5,000 suit sales-guys and follow it up with a smooth WebEx session talking about how their solution can sing and dance. Once the "solution" is sold, the client is handed the software and given the instructions to get it going. Sort of like, "Call us if you need us, read this..."

There is just something about buying a backup solution from the actual person who will be setting it up and maintaining it -someone local, someone available, and someone reliable - namely Teklogic.

I am a big believer in Image Backups - that is - a backup that contains a literal in-time "snapshot" of the device being backed up. This way we have a file that represents a true byte-level image of the machine being backed up. We wont have to mess around with Windows Disks, reboots, updates, drivers and then cataloging the backup file - and god help you if you are using Tape... (Tape is a 4 letter word as far as I'm concerned). With an image backup you prepare a recovery CD ahead of time and if there is ever a need for recovery, you boot with it and restore the image from NAS or external hard disk - that's it, pass go and collect $200... You can even restore this image to a "Virtual Server" hosted by your provider to further reduce downtime while your location is being repaired or server replacement parts are being procured.

Something else notable is that moving forward, Windows Server operating systems will not natively backup to tape - this includes Windows Server 2008. Companies insistent on using tape will have to install 3rd party applications to make this possible. Programs like, BackupExec, Yosemite, or ARCServe. 

Being on top of all the available backup methods and technologies has always been one of my priorities. At Teklogic we perform regular test disaster recovery scenarios with SQL, Exchange and Active Directory to ensure we will be ready in the event we need to use these skills. There is just so much out there, you need to make sure your technology provider is well-versed in the topic of disaster recovery and is familiar with all the different techniques and methodologies.

Staying in sync on a budget...

There is an old Unix utility I used to use all the time called 'rsync'. This very useful utility would essentially mirror a directory on you hard drive to a directory elsewhere of your choosing. Several NAS (Network Attached Storage) vendors utilize rsync today to perform backups to and from NAS devices and brand their device as having backup capability. There are two Windows-compatible ports of this software, one is called DeltaCopy and the other is cwRsync. Both of these ports use Cygwin which is essentially an emulator that allows Linux\Un*x applications to run under Windows. It is sort of an ugly hack in my opinion, but without it, Windows does not offer any native solutions - and no, XCopy doesn't count.

There are some other free solutions that work very well. The first one I will mention is Robocopy. This is a free tool written by Microsoft and has been included in the Windows Resource Kits since the NT4 days. Recently this tool has found its way into Windows Vista and Server 2008 right out of the box! This tool allows an administrator to write a simple batch file to mirror directories along with a host of other file copy operations that go beyond the scope of this posting. While Robocopy does NOT use Volume Shadow Copy Services - which can limit its usefulness as a backup utility where volumes may be in-use. I have seen creative admins utilize VSHADOW and DISKSHADOW to create a Shadow Copy of a volume and subsequently use Robocopy to copy it elsewhere.

The second utility I will mention is a bit more for the non-technical people. Microsoft has recently invested a lot of money in its "Live" services and some of them are particularly interesting.  In 2005 Microsoft acquired a company called Byte Taxi and assimilated their directory synchronization software into, what is currently called Windows Live FolderShare. This software is very unique in that first, it is free and second, it requires no firewall configuration. It is basically a client-side application that allows you to sync directories among computers connected to the Internet. All of its configuration is done through a point-and-click interface, making it easy for even novice computer users to configure. You basically visit the FolderShare website, sign-in with your Windows Live account, download the software onto at least two machines and configure a directory that you wish to remain synced among the machines. You could be in Bangladesh, but as long as you are connected to the Internet, your files will be sync-ing with all Internet-connected clients. There are some limitations to this software however - the first which is a biggie for me is that you are limited to 10,000 files per "library". There goes my ability to sync my MP3 collection ;) Also, you cannot have more than 10 libraries.  All-in-all this is a great solution for the home user looking to sync files between their desktop and laptop without having to mess with Windows FIleSharing. Eventually this service will be re-branded as Windows Live Sync once it is out of beta stage. This technology will also be used in Windows Live Mesh,  Windows Live Skydrive and even Windows Live Messenger Sharing Folders.

There are some other great utilities which I will not get into much detail on such as Power Folder, the Microsoft SyncToy, DropBox, and Allway Sync...

Anyway, happy sync-ing!