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Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
Good timing on this. We've got like forty laptops at work that aren't part of the domain and don't have any sort of backup software on them so its just a matter of time before one dies and some user loses all their poo poo because they ignore my warnings to always work on the server via RDP (which IS backed up).

What are some good business options for something like this? Crashplan is the only system I have personal experience with but I'm totally clueless how it works in a business instead of personal setup.

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Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

ConfusedUs posted:

Good luck. If you were on a domain you could force a solution through software deployments and GPOs, but since you're not...

You could invest in something like a crashplan or carbonite sub for each computer, and hope the users don't disable it. Someone probably will.

Or you could make it official policy to work on the server via RDP (or create some network shares, or whatever) and just say "tough poo poo" when things go badly. When, not if.

If it goes badly enough, you can leverage that to get your systems on a goddamned domain so you can prevent the issue.

I've got people who can remote in and install software on the machines - the problem is figuring out what backup software would be best for the job. They're all remote users and the laptops are only brought into the offices like once a month if ever, thus why they're not part of the domain - Windows 7 Pro doesn't include DirectAccess and I can't convince finance to spring for 50 upgrades to Ultimate here.

Assuming Windows 10 includes DirectAccess in Professional they'll be coming on board with the domain but otherwise it's just a case of "I need some way to get 50 laptops backing up to some online provider without clobbering each others' stuff, all while being billed to a single account/invoice". Getting the software onto the laptops isn't an issue really so much as figuring out what would be best here. I was thinking Crashplan but I only have experience using the family plan so I was hoping someone else might have some suggestions or comments.

The users don't have local admin so disabling backups isn't an issue if it's UAC protected or whatever.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

ConfusedUs posted:

Backblaze is for sure, for new subs. Carbonite is, but via email campaign I think.

FWIW I can't find Backblaze's discounts (if they exist?) and it doesn't look like Crashplan is doing anything.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
If you're looking at multiple terabytes of stuff on-demand from multiple sources without using some wonky frontend (Crashplan), have you considered colocation? You'd be looking at ~$70/month average for random datacenters around the country but that will generally get you an unmetered 1U at a lot of places, and then you can just do whatever you want with it once you've provided the hardware. While I was typing this up and comparing prices I found a place that is doing 10x10 1Us for $29/month, even. Get an RS140, throw in two 4TB drives, go to town.

Edit: this is almost certainly overkill and/or a bad idea unless you are loaded.

Sheep fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Apr 1, 2015

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

Ashex posted:

My main gripe is that I have a media server at home running crashplan which my laptop and desktop backup to, unfortunately Crashplan doesn't allow the media server to push those backups to the cloud so only the contents on the server are being backed up offsite.


If they allowed that then everyone would backup all their machines to the one PC for which they bought a license and just backup everything from there and basically skirt their entire licensing model.

Edit: I guess yeah it's dumb if you want to conserve bandwidth or something but that's basically a third world/Australia problem.

Sheep fucked around with this message at 11:16 on May 9, 2016

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

Ashex posted:

Crashplan licenses per computer with no discount for multiple so I'd be paying $180 for all three. If they offered some feature that allows you to do what I want for a reduced cost (say $15/computer) I'd be happy.

Edit: it took me two and a half hours to realize that you didn't notice that the family plan exists and are talking about three separate individual licenses.

All of your problems are solved by buying a family license instead of individual. It works out to $1.25/machine/month, which is pretty much the definition of reduced cost. It's all tied to your one master account and all you have to do to convert from individual to family is buy the license and apply it on your dashboard, it even spells it out on the Subscriptions page on the dashboard.

Sheep fucked around with this message at 18:55 on May 9, 2016

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

TomWaitsForNoMan posted:

I've been using Crashplan at home for about a week and it's been horrifically slow to upload my data. I have 15Mbps upload on my line but Crashplan is stuck at 1.5, even with zero throttling set in the application. At this rate it's going to be a long time before all my stuff (less than a terabyte) is uploaded.

Is retrieval also going to be this slow? If I have to wait weeks to get all my data back I may as well not get it back at all. Is there a way to improve the upload speed? Are there alternatives that are faster?

EDIT: I'm in the UK if that makes a difference

FWIW the Linux client is unthrottled. I downloaded and then uploaded several hundred gigabytes of stuff in an afternoon on it when their TOS changed a few weeks ago. No way was I gonna do that on the Windows client since it would have taken weeks.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
Worth noting that Crashplan's Windows client is throttled but if you run the Linux version it is unthrottled so you can upload just as fast as your connection will allow. Even setting up a Linux VM just to run Crashplan would be a tremendous time saver on a reasonably sized data set.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
Edit: I had a dumb question and solved it 30 seconds after hitting post, so for some content, what's the deal with Google Cloud Storage? I've got half a terabyte backed up there but have yet to be charged a cent despite doing a bajillion gets/puts/deletes over the last couple months (easily three-four terabytes of traffic worth). Do they ever start charging or what? The $300 credit expired long ago.

Edit: by my math we did ~70 million Class A operations in one month alone, which should have been ~$350 in charges.

Sheep fucked around with this message at 19:37 on Mar 8, 2017

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

thiazi posted:

What would a transition from Windows to a Linux VM entail - stand up the VM, install the Crashplan client, mount the volumes in Linux and go? I am interested in doing this but don't want to re-upload everything that I've already pushed from the Windows client, and I'm afraid that would be required since Crashplan would see the VM as a new device...

I did this exact thing last year and I want to say that we didn't have any issues masquerading as an old machine that hadn't backed up in years but don't quote me on that.

One thing you can do, if old data isn't going to be changing or updated (we store a lot of data that we will never, ever need again) is to just set the option to retain deleted files and then carry on with your day. We've got data stored in Crashplan that hasn't existed on our end in nearly a decade and everything is swell, I actually did a full restore just to verify things a while back and there were no issues.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
As you said Crashplan's client was the best by a wide margin, I cringe at the thought of having to use Carbonite.

I'm probably going to convert to a small business plan and just trim things down to where I only backup a central store and access all my "needs to be backed up" stuff via NFS, at least until something else comes along.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003

Furism posted:

So I have tried a bunch of "backup to S3" software but I can't find any that I like.

Tried rclone? I guess if "has a GUI" is a requirement this is out though.

Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
That's what I do, pain in the rear end but better than Carbonite or Backblaze or whatever.

You can even have symlinks involved so long as the actual target folder selected in the Crashplan client isn't a symlink itself, and backing up NFS shares etc is still doable.

Sheep fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Aug 26, 2017

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Sheep
Jul 24, 2003
The Windows client is garbage - are you using the Linux one? I did a full 4TB restore in about a day with it (~60MBps average).

I converted my Crashplan personal account over to a business account and it's been just fine. The only thing that changed is now I just rsync stuff to a Linux box before letting it upload instead of doing it straight from my desktops with a family plan.

Sheep fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Dec 1, 2017

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