Tech Support HELL

Um, why not? It's a simple script that you run from task scheduler... of course shadow copies are better, but there is nothing impossible about automatically backing up 40GB to a new location every day. If the client insists - it's his money.

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Uhm. Why not? Seems like a very easy cron-able task to me.

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See: idiot without coffee=me. :)

That should read 140GB instead of 40.

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I added an edit. I mistyped 140 as 40.

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Still does not compute. 140GB, assuming a conservative 5MB/s transfer speed, will take about 8 hours to copy - that quite fits the definition of "overnight". You'll need to insert a check into the script that will clean up old copies as the target runs out of room, but that isn't at all difficult.

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Getting cron to run on a system that does shadow copies isn't trivial at all :)

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I could get it over there yes. But I cannot fit seven copies of 140GB on 1TB while it is also storing other data taking up 25%.

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So tell him to either settle for 3-5 copies, or buy a larger model. Or, as an alternative, grab these two scripts (http://gholam.livejournal.com/76836.html), set them up to run on his server along with a VSS snapshot every hour or two, and explain to him that instead of one snapshot a day with a 3-5 day retention period, he's getting a snapshot every hour, with a retention period several months long. In parallel, set up a robocopy task to synchronize the share to the terastation to keep a "most current" copy for disaster recovery.

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The 3-5 days is a good idea and I'll probably end up implementing something like that. Redundancy is never a bad thing.
Part of my irritation stems from the fact that I originally suggested they get a larger TeraStation (given their data space consumption) but they went with the smallest model.

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This is the part where you look smug (bonus points if you transmit the smugness over telephone) and say, "See, I told you so!" :)

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http://cronw.sourceforge.net/

:)

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or: http://surguy.net/articles/icron.xml

cron on windows is older than VSS on windows, by a long shot!

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Um, but what's the point, considering that OS already has a full-featured task scheduler and multiple scripting engines?

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What does cron have to do with VSS?

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Probably the same point as you snarking about whether or not cron was available in the first place? (IOW: absolutely nothing but smartassery.)

Besides, the interface to the windows task scheduler BLOWS.

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Getting cron to run on a system that does shadow copies isn't trivial at all :)

You tell me, you brought it up.

If you've lost track already, you snarked (presumably lightheartedly) at mattcaron for talking about cron in the context of an OP that mentioned VSS; I snarked (presumably lightheartedly) back; then you got your panties in a knot.

You're gonna have to untangle them on your own, I'm not going in there.

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I kind of prefer task scheduler's interface to cron's lack thereof.

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I just envisioned someone saying, "Oh! Your panties appear to be tangled. Here, let me fix that for you." and just about died laughing.

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If I have a task that needs to run hourly, I do this in my crontab:

# min hr day mon wday task
   0  *  *   *   *    /path/to/task

Whereas in Task Scheduler, I have to first set the task to run daily, then pick a start time, then pick a one day repeat, then click Advanced, then pick a start date, then check Repeat Task, tell it to repeat every (1) (hours), tell it to do so Until (duration) (23) hours (59) minutes, then OK, then apply. And go over that tortured logic again and hope it still makes sense.

I can understand being scared of text interfaces if you're not used to them. And it wouldn't hurt to have a GUI available for modifying crontabs (which is probably why there are several of them available). But actually championing the Task Scheduler interface? Mind-boggling.

Edited Date: 2008-09-10 06:57 pm (UTC)

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captpackrat.livejournal.com

Assuming a Windows system, how about SyncBack (http://www.2brightsparks.com/syncback/syncback-hub.html)? Instead of doing a straight copy of all the data every single time, SyncBack can only copy files that have been changed.

I back up about 90 Gigs of data every night to a Firewire drive. It takes about 5-15 minutes because 88-89.5 Gigs of that data rarely changes.

(Of course, the initial backup will take hours, yes, but you only have to do it once.)

There's a free version available, as well as $30 and $50 versions that offer additional features.

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Oh, that actually looks perfect for an entirely different client's problem. Thanks.

Which reminds me of a fun occurrence. I went to this client who has a SNAP server in one location and another 400 miles away that they are trying to sync data between. They didn't get the right SNAP servers that will do this automatically. For some reason. So they purchased third party software to do it for them (but it does everything which takes forever so this program should speed things up for them nicely)
Anyway, this is actually a fed department and the third workstation was shipped to this location with the third party software installed to do the sole task of the sync work. But I guess they wrote down the password incorrectly. They couldn't log on to the workstation to point it at the snap servers. I ran a quick password recovery program, blanked out the old password, logged on, created a new password, and set up the sync software.

And promptly set the entire department into a frenzy. OMG! Someone has taken a federal computer and CRACKED THE PASSWORD!! AAAHH!

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Oh! You appear to be writing a ransom note. May I suggest these fonts?

Courtesy Demetri Martin who is awesome

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taleya.livejournal.com

destruction of keyboard, invoice in the mail, etc etc

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I actually just rsnapshot (http://www.rsnapshot.org/) my data. But then again, it requires a filesystem which supports hardlinks. :-)

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Uh, you mean like NTFS 3.0? The one introduced in Windows 2000? And in any case, VSS works at block level, so if you have large files with small changes, you end up copying only the 4KB blocks instead of multi-gigabyte files.

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Considering I stopped using Windows at NT4, yeah, that's probably what I mean. :-)

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vulpisfoxfire.livejournal.com

Heh. Is 'Feducated' a term yet? IIRC, doesn't that kind of 'cracking' require physical access to the computer, and isn't doable by remote? Of course, if you did this across the network, then maybe I can see the problem, given that the average 'cracker' has free access to better tools to get in than cheapskate federally-funded departments have to keep them out. ;-) Then again, if their firewall setup is done right, someone would still have to be *inside* the network to do it even then...

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I use rsync to do the same thing.

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jecook

*awards you 500 gold coins, and the bill for cleaning gummie bears off the monitor*

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