Mirrored backup vs rotational backup?

[Gerr]

I am in the process of creating a NAS with a 2nd smaller/weaker system acting as a pure backup system.  I have everything planned already except for how to backup my family photos/pics, which is the most important data out of everything on my NAS.  The main NAS will have a pair of 4TB HDD's mirrored together for this share, and I have another two 4TB's drive to use as a backup for that.  I just need to decide which backup method will be best.  I have narrowed it down to the two options...

 

1.  Setup both 4TB HDD's in a mirror and just do a nightly file sync between the NAS and the backup server.

 

2.  Setup a single 4TB HDD in a hot-swap bay and do a nightly file sync and then swap HDD's monthly with the spare being kept in my fire-proof safe. I know, off-site would be better, but my only option for that is at my parents house which is a half hour car ride away and that means a lot of bumpy travel for the HDD's each way and I am worried that would damage the drives over time.

 

Thoughts?

[Windows7ge]

In this instance it isn't really worthwhile to setup RAID1 on your backup. If all the data can fit on one drive you're actually increasing the likelihood of data loss by adding unnecessary variables (RAID).

 

If you get to the point where data no longer fits on 1 drive then look into RAID6. RAID1, particularly for backup purposes is depreciated.

[Daniel644]

if you mirror between the 2 drives in the main rig then occasionally update the backup to the second rig you should be fine, ideally you want something that can be stored somewhere else (preferably many many miles away from you in case a natural disaster hits and takes out your town, like Tornado, Hurricane, Flood). Google Photos supposedly gives you unlimited storage of photo's (up to 16 Megapixel) and 1080p video. this would ensure as long as you survive you can recover your photos.

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, Gerr said:

I am in the process of creating a NAS with a 2nd smaller/weaker system acting as a pure backup system.  I have everything planned already except for how to backup my family photos/pics, which is the most important data out of everything on my NAS.  The main NAS will have a pair of 4TB HDD's mirrored together for this share, and I have another two 4TB's drive to use as a backup for that.  I just need to decide which backup method will be best.  I have narrowed it down to the two options...

 

1.  Setup both 4TB HDD's in a mirror and just do a nightly file sync between the NAS and the backup server.

 

2.  Setup a single 4TB HDD in a hot-swap bay and do a nightly file sync and then swap HDD's monthly with the spare being kept in my fire-proof safe. I know, off-site would be better, but my only option for that is at my parents house which is a half hour car ride away and that means a lot of bumpy travel for the HDD's each way and I am worried that would damage the drives over time.

 

Thoughts?

Make sure to do frequent snapshots to the backup drive, not a simple mirror sync. 

 

This ensures you’re not just protected against hardware failure. You’re also protected against accidental file deletion, cryptolocker/ransomware, malware

infections, and so on. 

 

Any intelligent system will only take up space for changes (aside from the odd full backup on whatever schedule you set, if ever). 

[Mikensan]

When the disks are powered down the head is supposed to go back to a starting position - so bumps on the road shouldn't be a problem.

 

Since you already have (possibly more) copies of the data you're backing up, your backup array does not need to be mirrored. So long as you're not going to be lazy and forget to rotate the disks, I would proceed with keeping one of the 4TB disks local and one at your parents' house and rotating them monthly (depending on the freqnecy of your photos).

 

You could even go so far to setup a laptop + USB enclsoure at your parents' house and do a live sync.

 

To @dalekphalm's point - I highly agree. Setup snapshots - being able to roll back your data is pretty important.

 

[Gerr]

Photo's & Video's don't compress well, so if I am doing a snapshot along with the regular file sync, I'll quickly run out of backup disk space.

 

Maybe a good alternative is to keep one drive as the dedicated file sync backup and then use the hotswap drive to keep a monthly snapshot copy of not only the pic/video share, but the other 2 shares as well as long as everything fits.  I could always get a larger drive when the all 3 snapshots no longer fit.  I happen to have a 5TB non-NAS drive I could use for that and then can repurpose one of the 4TB NAS drives to something else like client (OS) backups.

[dalekphalm]

17 minutes ago, Gerr said:

Photo's & Video's don't compress well, so if I am doing a snapshot along with the regular file sync, I'll quickly run out of backup disk space.

 

Maybe a good alternative is to keep one drive as the dedicated file sync backup and then use the hotswap drive to keep a monthly snapshot copy of not only the pic/video share, but the other 2 shares as well as long as everything fits.  I could always get a larger drive when the all 3 snapshots no longer fit.  I happen to have a 5TB non-NAS drive I could use for that and then can repurpose one of the 4TB NAS drives to something else like client (OS) backups.

Why are you doing a "regular file sync" at all?

 

Snapshot file backups are what you need. Your off-site backup can be a sync/mirror of the regular backup, but the regular backup should have file versioning/history - otherwise a single malware could wipe out your entire backup (since the malware infection would get replicated to backup, erasing older versions - and bam, you're done).

[Gerr]

It wouldn't matter if I use file sync or snapshots if the entire drive or share gets encrypted by malware.  I do plan on using a full-incremental image backup system for the personal shares so I can have a revision history and the heavy compression that comes with those systems.  But for video & picture files, I feel it's a waste of time and a regular file sync is fine.

 

Unless malware self replicates to each system via the network, no client systems will have a direct share or connection to the backup server.  The only system with access to the shares on the backup server will be the NAS server, so unless it gets infected too, my backup server "should" be protected.  At least I think that's how it works.

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Gerr said:

It wouldn't matter if I use file sync or snapshots if the entire drive or share gets encrypted by malware.  I do plan on using a full-incremental image backup system for the personal shares so I can have a revision history and the heavy compression that comes with those systems.  But for video & picture files, I feel it's a waste of time and a regular file sync is fine.

 

Unless malware self replicates to each system via the network, no client systems will have a direct share or connection to the backup server.  The only system with access to the shares on the backup server will be the NAS server, so unless it gets infected too, my backup server "should" be protected.  At least I think that's how it works.

Sorry - there might be some confusion here.

 

1. Incremental backup for personal shares -> No problems there

 

2. In terms of malware with a "mirror" based sync backup system is this:

User Gets malware

User opens photo

Photo is infected

Infected photo gets replicated to backup - replaces original

 

Exact same thing will happen if a user accidentally overwrites or modifies a photo. Changes will get sent to the backup system.

 

So it's not so much the fact that the malware can directly get to the share, it's that the backup system will replicate the malware (or the overwritten file, etc) to the backup.

 

You can potentially avoid these issues with careful configuration, but there are limits without going to a full incremental based system.

[Mikensan]

Snapshots by nature do not take up much space - you just never recover space from deleted files (until they expire). Most modern file systems are only going to write deltas to disk when a file has changed. This is why snapshots are superrior to incrementals, in my opinion. 

 

Normally you set a lifespan for snapshots, you do not keep them forever. A daily snapshot set to expire every 2 weeks or even every 1 week - may be all you need. These snapshots should live and stay on your live NAS. Your backup should just be the way your data is at the time of replication.

 

Snapshots are read only to all users, malware even using your own credentials will not be able to infect the snapshots. This is how your data on the NAS is protected, even if the infected file gets backed up to the NAS and replaces the healthy file.

[Gerr]

Not sure if this matters, but the NAS server will be Windows Server 2016 Essentials and the backup server will be Windows 10 Pro for Workstations.  Can these OS's do snapshots?

[dalekphalm]

17 hours ago, Gerr said:

Not sure if this matters, but the NAS server will be Windows Server 2016 Essentials and the backup server will be Windows 10 Pro for Workstations.  Can these OS's do snapshots?

How are you currently doing your backups? Using RoboCopy or XCopy in a script?

 

There's different ways you can accomplish the goal - the built-in Windows Backup will have versioning - and the "legacy" Windows 7 style Image backup does incremental.

 

But given that both systems are Windows-based, you can install whatever you want to do the work. I've heard good things about "urBackup":

https://www.urbackup.org/

 

It only stores files that have changed or are otherwise completely new. So if the same Image file has been unchanged for 5 years, then it won't need to make any extra copies of that file (aside from whatever potential extra off-site backup copies or whatever if you wanted to set that up).

 

In your case, you could setup the Client on your NAS, and the Server on the "Backup Server". You could also install the client on all your endpoint workstations too if you wanted OS images, etc.

[Mikensan]

Volume shady copy will give you versioning and make life really easy. You will be able to right click a file > properties > previous versions. It is very easy to setup - however when you access the files remotely do NOT use an administrator account. Create a new normal account for the file shares (or one for each of you) and give that account access to the files. The Administrator account should almost never be used to log in directly with, and you should never use this computer to browse the internet or play games with etc....

 

Reason being is the Administrator account can be used to start a service/program as system and overwrite your versioned files - meaning ransomeware would cut through your files like butter. If you're going to use the administrator account then don't depend on versioning to save you in the event of crypto-locking malware.

 

http://helpcenter.itopia.com/manage/configuring-volume-shadow-copies-vss-on-windows-server

 

 

For backup, take a look at Veeam Windows Agent - it is free to use for home and imo easy to use. Nothing to install on the server, veeam installs on each client PC.

[Gerr]

I have a single full copy of Acronis that I was thinking about using on the Windows 10 Backup server and seeing up the traditional montly full, weekly decremental, and daily incremental backup scheme and pull the data from the Windows 2016 Server NAS shares to local drives.

 

For my client PC backups, I like Macrium Reflect and I will just create a boot drive image once a month and store it up on a dedicated share on the backup server.  I will do the same using Acronis on the Win 10 server.  Still deciding on what to use on the Win 2016 server, but will find something free.

 

Every month or two I will hook up an external 5TB drive and copy all the latest full backups over, plus the latest OS client images, and then take that to my parents house for storage.

 

This sound like a solid backup plan?

[dalekphalm]

1 hour ago, Gerr said:

I have a single full copy of Acronis that I was thinking about using on the Windows 10 Backup server and seeing up the traditional montly full, weekly decremental, and daily incremental backup scheme and pull the data from the Windows 2016 Server NAS shares to local drives.

 

For my client PC backups, I like Macrium Reflect and I will just create a boot drive image once a month and store it up on a dedicated share on the backup server.  I will do the same using Acronis on the Win 10 server.  Still deciding on what to use on the Win 2016 server, but will find something free.

 

Every month or two I will hook up an external 5TB drive and copy all the latest full backups over, plus the latest OS client images, and then take that to my parents house for storage.

 

This sound like a solid backup plan?

It certainly will suffice - though I'm wondering why you're using so many different programs. Have you looked into a free centralized Server-Client backup software suite?

[Gerr]

I only have one copy of Acronis, and it's the non-server version.  I could buy several more copies and one server version, but that would be expensive.

 

I could pick one free version and use it on all PC's, but still would need something different for the server itself.

 

Any recommendation on a free backup utility that runs on Win 10 AND Win 2016 Server Essentials?

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Gerr said:

I only have one copy of Acronis, and it's the non-server version.  I could buy several more copies and one server version, but that would be expensive.

 

I could pick one free version and use it on all PC's, but still would need something different for the server itself.

 

Any recommendation on a free backup utility that runs on Win 10 AND Win 2016 Server Essentials?

https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2005821-what-open-source-backup-solutions-are-out-there

 

UrBackup is free and open source, and runs on Windows.

 

There's also "Amanda", which is a very popular OSS Linux backup software. You'd need to run a Linux server (VM or something) for it, but the Client supports Windows.

 

And of course, as mentioned previously by @Mikensan, Veeam - Veeam has some free versions, and is a trusted Enterprise product that big companies use.