You're doing back-ups.... how?

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

I work for an external IT company and some of our clients have their own IT guy onsite so we just handle things that are out of their realm of experience. We are also heavy into managed services. I have been helping out with monthly reviews of our managed clients and get to one of our customers with an internal IT.
When I come to the bit where we review their backups I start trying to look up how these are being done. I check the usual suspects... no veritas installed, not using our "backup server" solution, no scheduled NT backups. I dig deeper, trying to figure out how they are doing backups. I find an external hard drive and look around at the files...

Are you ready for this? I sure as hell wasn't.

Windows briefcases.

I kid you not, they're using windows briefcases on a USB drive for backups.

Comments

[firon.livejournal.com]

And here I didn't think anyone still used that software! :)

[insaint.livejournal.com]

I didn't think anyone EVER used it... :)

[firon.livejournal.com]

Actually, that was my first thought too, but then I remembered one person I'd met a long while ago who used it at least once! ;-)

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

I used it once just to see if it would work.

It didn't.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't really see what is wrong with this. A quick google shows Windows Briefcase to be a sync utility, thus I presume it works like rsync. For a hot, easily accessible backup, what is wrong with rsyncing to an external disk? If I wasn't worried about offsite backups, I'd likely be using a stack of external HDD's which are rotated daily (that way, if a lightning strike toasts today's backup because it is still connected, we still have yesterday's backup.

I use a similar system as described above for home, where the backup process is about a "when I feel like it" frequency, and is just a 3rd level in case the RAID5 array dies and the hot backup which is done every 4 hours dies (mainly in case something toasts the whole electrical system on both servers).

So, can you explain what is so bad about what they are doing?

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Briefcase is rsync implemented by clueless morons high on crack. It simply doesn't work, even if it claims it has. Ghost is a better backup solution than Briefcase.

[goose-entity.livejournal.com]

you are assuming there.... dangerous thing to do. Remember, these people are so devoid of Clue that they use Windows....

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

The problem with windows briefcase is that it was developed with windows 95 or so and is just not reliable.

Synchronizing to an external drive is fine if you're not worried about offsite but briefcase is not a reliable way to do that.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Aaah.. Okay, so the issue is not with the philosophy as it is with the fact that MS can't program their way out of a bag. I'll buy that.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Heh. Fair enough.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Makes sense. Silly me, presuming that the app correctly did what it was supposed to do...

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

What's wrong with GHOST?

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Nothing, great piece of software and a lifesaver for large-scale deployments. But a backup solution it ain't. Works in a pinch though.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Briefcase is legacy Win9x software, which is most of the problem. MS can do some pretty good code (Vista, after you reconfigure it to get around the mind-fuckingly stupid default install options, is actually pretty damned good, better than XP in fact)

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Briefcase sort-of works when used as a method to sync a network drive to your laptop for offline access (Which is actually what it was designed to do, badly). As a backup solution it doesn't work, depsite documentation that indicates that it can do that as well as the offline file access thing.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

That might be so, but I refuse to even contemplate Vista because of the "we can blacklist your hardware" DRM protections.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

I simply don't use WMP at all or any media players which use overlays for playback, all of that DRM really only affects compliant software, which MPC and VLC aren't.

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

That was not my understanding from reading the technical whitepapers and bug reports. Specifically, if someone exploits a flaw in some driver to steal content, MS can blacklist the driver until it is fixed, thus disabling the hardware.

That and I have too many machines to actually purchase licenses for OS's. I just throw more copies of Ubuntu on them and don't worry about it...

[soupisntfree.livejournal.com]

Make use of whats available i guess?

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Define "Backup" :P

I rebuilt a laptop for my sister and ghosted the HDD because I know she'll hose it. When she drags it pathetically before me and asks for it to work again, I'll ghost the system from the backup disk...and it will be exactly as it was when it left my hands in the first place, with all her programs and utilities intact. Shazaam.

Oh, I'm sorry, did you lose all your mp3's? Shoulda thought of that before you let your 13 year old son use it to surf porn

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

That's correct, but that's HDCP-only and affects XP as well as Mac OS X if your hardware is HDCP compatible (IE anything with HDMI output). Note that MS isn't the only one who can do this, the content owners can too.

Of course if you use software that doesn't respect the DRM in the first place, this is irrelevant as the blacklisting will be ignored (if it's from the content provider, OS updates will matter but can only affect drivers, not 3rd party software).

Personally, I run a mix of OS's, but I've got more Windows licences than mchines these days (Last I checked I had at least 4 valid NT4 licenses floating around, along with 3 XP licenses and 2 Vista licenses). All came with machines or were comped somehow (MS ave NT4 Workstation licenses out like candy to students in the late 90's).

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

That's an install image, backups include data as well. Images are very useful for large-scale rollouts as well as restoring idiot users machines to known-good states. But they aren't backups. I'd rather lose the OS/software install than the data, the former is reconstructable.

[taleya.livejournal.com]

And the prior remark was what is known as "flippancy" and a deep burning desire to make her stupidity hurt her as much as it does me :P


(I've set up legitimate backup capacities, if she doesn't use them, I shall commence with the pointing and laughing)

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

Nice to see I'm not the only mutant who loves Vista!

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

There'd be more if only the default install wasn't so stupid. I mean, why the hell is the iSCSI service _running_ by default on a Vista Home Premium machine? Especially when you can set it to start only when needed? And there's a shitpot of other services turned on by default that shouldn't be.

And the less that's said about UAC, the better. Even MS's Security Guru has admitted it exists specifically to annoy users.

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

Well, if you had some list posted somewhere of the little thangs I should do, I'd look at it. Not asking you to make one, just in case you had one. :)

[anthalus.livejournal.com]

Bacula? Amanda? Geez, I'd rather use floppies before I would trust a windows product...

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Google 'Vista Optimization', there's a lot of good info out there, especially with regards to which services you need to be running and which are wasting memory and CPU cycles.

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

NT Backup or a simple xcopy script are both readily available and would be better options.

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

Wait, documentation (and sales people) lie about what products are capable of???

Say it isn't so!!

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

I'm in that boat as well, again providing for optimization. Speaking of, I need to poke around for the latest of that stuff. Good reminder.

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

Many thanks!

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

hahaaa Tim Reid looks stoned as a bat in that icon. :D

[jdotmi.livejournal.com]

Just say NO to NT Backup. Please. Half the time it can't even read it's own backup files.

[yanni85.livejournal.com]

And yet I still trust it more than briefcases.