Introduction to Backup Systems

well I've got some bad news for you and some worse news for you your server is dead well whatever happened whether or not it was a electrical surge or or what not your motherboard pried it's dead not only that but but your hard drive your hard drive is physically dead there's no way for us to get any data off of it something must have happened either the circuit board got fried with that electric surge came through or the motor or something inside of this guide so if there was just a corruption if there you know the data just got a little corrupted or if there was a virus that took out the operating system we could get your data back no problem being that this hard drive physically died just it physically won't work we can't get the data back for you and if you send it off to a day in recovery shop you're probably looking at two to three thousand dollars to get your data back so we have the parts here no problem we can get you another server up and running just get us your your backup files and you know 24 24 hours we should have you good to go oh you don't have any backup files you don't have any backup files none whatsoever oh well you're screwed I'm Eli the computer guy and today we're going to go over backup systems so if your hard drive physically dies all of your data is essentially gone so hard drives have moving parts inside of them and if something happens one of the platters gets damaged the motor stops spinning or any other number of problems all of your data that resides on that hard drive is gone now if you get a virus on your computer or if you get a small corruption on your computer even if the computer can't boot up most people can get your data back pretty easily although you can't boot into the computer somebody can put that hard drive on to a data recovery device and recover your data again relatively easily it's going to cost a couple hundred bucks but you'll get all of your data back all of your email your documents etc now if your hard drive physically dies the motor stops spinning the platter gets damaged the the arm inside of it gets damaged your data is gone you have to send your hard drive off to a data recovery shop and you're going to be spending a minimum of two thousand dollars to try to get your data back and maybe a lot more up to five and ten thousand dollars in some instances so today we're going to go over backup systems because if your hard drive physically dies but you have a complete backup of what's on the hard drive then you don't spend five thousand dollars recovering the data you simply go to your backup restore the backup on to a good hard drive and you're off and running again today we're going to talk about types of backups the media that backups are stored on and some of the software that's out there that you can use to back up your computer and server the first thing that we're going to talk about our types of backups these are overall categories of how backups are conducted almost all backup software companies use these categories so if you understand these general categories you will understand how all backups generally work there are four types of backups that are currently used there is what is called a full backup there is a differential backup there is an incremental backup there is something called our sink and the fifth is most soft backup software companies now use a combination Allah follow these so what is a full backup a full backup is exactly what it sounds like the backup software creates a full backup of everything that it is supposed to backup so it backs up all the files everything so if you tell it to backup a folder it'll back up everything in the forward if you tell it to backup a hard drive it'll backup every single thing in that hard drive it's very useful but it backs up everything so it can be time-consuming and use a lot of space the next type of backup is called a differential backup what a differential backup does is it backs up only what has changed since the last full backup so you create a full backup of your computer and then let's say every night you run a differential backup so when the backup happens instead of copying everything on your computer again the software will see what what was copied before and we'll see what has changed since that full backup happened and then then it will only back up what has changed this obviously takes a lot less space but if you go to do a recovery for your data you need both the full backup and the differential backup to get all of your data back so the differential backup backs up everything that has happened since the last full backup so this takes less space than the full but it's still still pretty simple the next type of backup is what is called an incremental backup what an incremental backup is is you take your first full backup and then the first time incremental backup runs then it will backup everything that has happened since the first person since the full backup has happened the next time it runs it will backup everything since the last incremental backup and then when it runs again since the last sentimental backup the last incremental backup and it keeps going so it backs up only what has changed since the last incremental backup this is creates smaller backup files and is a lot quicker to do especially if you're running backups at night because it's only backing up what has changed since the last incremental backup the good part about this is that it's quicker to do than either full or differential backups but the problem is is you need all of those incremental backup files in order to recover your data so if something happens to one of those incremental backup files then you can't get your data back so Angra mental backups are faster they take less storage space when they run but they're more prone to problems because if any one incremental backup file disappears you may lose all of your data then the fourth general type of backup is what is called our sink and this is a new type of backup that's only really been used a lot for the last few years what the increment what the rsync backup does is it only chain only records the bits and bytes that have changed since the last backup what does this mean during a differential or incremental backup what happens is the software goes through and it sees which files have been modified since the last full backup so if you have a word document that you modified since the last pull back it will then copy that entire Word document to the backup file if you change let's say 50 pictures it will then backup all 50 pictures because those have been modified since the last full backup well what our sync does which is cool is it only backs up the bits and bytes that have changed since the last backup so instead of copying that full word document or those 50 pictures to the to the backup destination it will only backup the bits and bytes and effect so instead of backing up an entire let's say five megabyte word file a lot of graphics in it it will only copy over those few kilobytes that you have changed so if you go in and you only change one paragraph in the entire word document it will literally only backup that one paragraph this becomes very important later when we talk about the medium media that is used to store backup files because when you're going over the Internet if you try to upload large files let's say an entire picture that will take a long time but if you're only trying to backup the bits and bytes of a particular picture that's not going to take as long this in Windows they have a version of this in Windows called Delta copy so rsync originally was able Linux piece of software they now have a version in Windows called Delta copy but again it only backs up the bits and bytes since the last full backup nowadays with software companies all these types of backups are very useful so many times the companies now create a combined version where they will create a full backup and then use parts of the incremental or differential or are sick to to keep that full backup updated so the full backup the differential backup the incremental backup and the rsync backup are the four types of backups that are used when you speak about backup systems but many of the pieces of software that now exist use a combined version of all of these now that we've talked about the types of backups we need to talk about the format that the backup software stores backups into so when it copies all the data all of your hard drive how does it store that data there's three general ways that the data gets stored now one is that the software pulls all the data off of whatever's getting backed up and turns it into some kind proprietary format and then stores that on to your backup media so it takes all your pictures your documents your operating system everything it normally lumps it into one ball that only that software understands and then it puts that on to your backup destination whether it's a hard drive a CD or a tape drive the good part with this is that you can do something called a bare metal recovery what a bare metal recovery is is if your hard drive dies you can pull the hard drive out of the system you can put in a brand new hard drive and then all you have to do is run a little recovery CD that the software company will give you and in an hour so your entire server computer will be back up and running at the exact point of the last backup so you put in the new hard drive you run their recovery CD and then you're back up and running there's no problems you don't have to install any operating systems you don't have to do anything you put in a new hard drive runs recovery CD you're back to where you were at the last backup point the problem with this though is if you need to get any individual problem of documents or anything all out of the the backup that you created you have to have their software to do it so let's say you have an old server that has something called veritas backup executive on it the server crashes let's say you don't want to recover the server you just need to grab a few folders off of there and dump it onto the brand-new server you have well if you still have those veritas CDs you can install that veritas we're into another computer and you can recover your data if you're like most people and you lost those Veritas CDs three or four years ago there's nothing you can do all of your data is in this this proprietary format and without the software to be able to access a proprietary format you can't get anything out of it so that's that's the problem when backup software stores into a proprietary format the good part is you can do a bare metal recovery you just throw in a new hard drive run a set of recovery discs and you're back up and running the bad part is if you only need to get a few files or something happens you have to have the original software to be able to read any of the backup another type of backup is basically where the software simply copies everything in its normal format that you get this a lot but let's say the Mac store external hard drives you plug the hard drive the external hard drive into your computer or server and it simply copies the files as they are onto the hard drive so you can take that external hard drive plug it into new computer and all of the the files are there to read you can just double-click on a Word file and you know start editing it that's really good so when it does this when the backup software backs up in a normal readable format you can just you can take the hard drive you can take the backup plug it in any computer and you can just start editing or start opening files right then there the problem with this though is in readable formats you cannot do a bare metal recovery so let's say you're using that little mac store hard drive backup routine on your server the problem is is if your server crashes it out and out dies and you need it back in order to get a fully running server you have to put a new hardrive in then you have to load all the server software then you have to reconfigure the server then you have to allow the antivirus software do this do that the other and then finally after about 24 hours you can copy that data back onto the server and your backup and run so with with readable if it backs up into a readable format like I say it's normally for workstation computers or home computers because you can just take the little hard drive plug into any other computer and you can you can read it right then and there but if you have a server or something it'll take you a long time to get back up and running the last format that your backup software can store your data in is a really really good innovation that's coming around in the last couple of years the backup software can now store everything that gets backed up and your server or computer into a virtual hard drive so this goes into the virtualization which is another class but basically what the software can do is it backs up everything on your computer the operating system the documents server settings everything and then it stores all that data in a virtual hard drive so the great part with that is if it stores it in virtual hard drive and the computer crashes you can bring in any other computer in the world as long as it has the right requirements plop it down install a virtual pc or VirtualBox some type of virtualization software and use that virtual hard drive and your server or computer is up and running lickety-split so you just have a computer that has virtualization software on there you take that virtual hard drive you point the two with the other and you get it running and you have a fully functioning computer in and as long to text to copy the data to the new computer so that's the latest that's that's more technical of you if you don't understand how virtualization works but if you're a professional that's a really good way to go now we need to talk about the media that your backup files are stored on so when your computer is getting backed up where where did those backup files go in the old days they used to use tapes is big or small nasty little magnetic tapes those were the best solution out of really really bad solutions tapes were really never never never ever a good idea so even back in the day when we had to use them they were still a horrible thing to have to use if you've ever had to recover anything you don't want to use tapes if you're currently using tapes you want to stop using tapes tapes are complete pain in the butt something that most people don't know is tapes only have a one year lifespan so I have seen a lot of people and companies they'll buy a set of backup tapes and then 6 or 7 years later they're still using the same backup tapes and they only last for about a year that's one of the problems with tapes is they get damaged very easily and then if the tape is damaged your backup is worthless I've seen this happen at a company they use tapes for backups their backup system their server crash they said no big deal we run our backups every night in front of my went to recover their backups recover their or their information off the backups tapes were complete crap and all their data was gone so they thought they had been doing the right thing but at the end of the day they had the next thing that we need to talk about the next type of media are CDs and DVDs I know a lot of people are using these nowadays and they're not bad as a short-term solution so you want to backup your pictures to CDs or backup your movies or whatever to DVDs you know it's quick it's easy you go to the normal staples or your office depot store and you can buy them what most people do not realize is CDs and DVDs are not considered a permanent backup media what this means is when you you put your data onto a CD or DVD consumer CDs and DVDs only have a life expectancy of five years however their bill they do degrade they do just start breaking down so if you put your information onto a CD or DVD you know it's fine for a couple years but if it's really important to you after five years the CD itself degrades so when you go to use it it may be completely worthless and that means you know if you take the seat if you you burn information to the CD you put it into a nice little cover you put it in your safe you know your kids don't touch it your grandma doesn't touch it your dogs don't touch it still after five years that that CD or DVD may be completely worthless so it's not how how carefully you you work with it it is simply CDs and DVDs are not considered permanent backup material so again if you're backing up something for a short period of time they're fine but don't back up let's say all of your pictures to a DVD and then expect it to be there in 20 years because it won't the best media I find for backup solutions are hard drives you can now backup from one hard drive directly to another hard drive but I used to do for my clients is put another internal hard drive into their computer or server so whenever the backup routine would happen it would backup to that internal hard drive the good part with this is hard drives are permanent media they don't you know die or get damaged the way tapes and CDs do and by doing an internal in the computer the computer can transfer the data a lot faster because it's not having to go out over a network it's not having to get burned to a CD simply copying the data to an internal hard drive I had found this to be the best way of backing up computers the nice part is to there's nothing to plug in there's nothing to change so clients never forgot about it because it's always in the computer the software that we use always backup to it we just do a normal routine never had to do anything ever had to change any tapes or CDs so we just worked and just working is a good thing you can do use external hard drives or little flash drives to backup your information these are considered permanent storage so that they do work fine you can do FTP backups with FTP means is that you can backup from one computer on the network to another so let's say you have a workstation computer that your accountant works on you want to make sure that she never loses her QuickBooks files every night you can have her little workstation computer copy or backup all of her little QuickBooks files up to a server on the on the same network that's it's pretty easy to do nowadays and then of course there's then there's a plethora of online backup solutions now this is where your computer or server backs up to some storage on the internet there's Mozy and Carbonite and there must be a twenty different major companies that do online backup so online backup takes data that's on your computer and then backs it up online so those are the the media that are used to backup your computer or server now I know one of the things that you're thinking is you think Eli I've heard of this thing called off-site backup and that seems like a really great idea and that that that's what I want to do so what is all side backup off-site backup is when you're either using tapes or external hard drives or some other media that you have a hold of to backup your server or workstations that you take those tapes or those external hard drives and you take them off site you take them home so that if there's a fire there's a burglary there's a tornado or scary nough then your entire like the building that your business is in literally is gone so any backups that you keep on-site are gone with with the building that you still have the the backup from from the last time the backup was done so you might be behind by a week but you haven't lost all of your data and this is a really good theoretical idea it's really great so I have sold so many clients I'm like you know here here's 150 hard $150 hard drive let's let's sell you two of these yeah you back up to this one week you take it home you back it up to this the other drive another week and then you take it home you keep swapping those out and you always have an off-site backup or back when tapes were around you know you do one one full backup on a tape and then you take it home and then you swap it up you know every every week or so this is a really great idea and I've made a lot of money selling you know external hard drives or whatever people for this and I've been very serious you notice this is a great thing for you and I love your time then I'll go back after about six months and I'll see those pretty little external hard drives and I'll see both of them sitting right beside the server collecting dust and I'll ask the secretary or CEO or whoever the hell's responsible for trying to take the the backups off site you know what's going on and they'll say oh yeah we we've been needing to do that uh thank you for reminding we will do that and then I come back the next month and then the hard riser is they're still there collecting dust so off-site backup basically means that you create some kind of full backup and you take it off site to your home or into a safe deposit box or whatever so that if your entire building burns down or gets lost in a tornado you still have your data again this is a really great idea but in my experience nobody ever does it out of the hundreds of business clients that I've dealt with I have literally had one that doesn't so that's what off-site backups are if you're worried about the off-site backup we'll go into it in a few minutes I would say do online backups because those actually happen I don't know anybody who really takes the off-site backup home now we need to talk about the software they're going to use to back up your your server or your workstation there are a lot of different types of backup software out there my company person personally uses a Cronus AC ro NIS I can't say enough about them but again there's a Veritas there's EMC solutions there's a lot of backup software out there one of the first things I'll warn you is with backup software again you get what you pay for so I know a lot of people think or realize that Microsoft build backup software into their products so Windows XP Windows Vista Windows 7 when it comes out server Windows Server 2008 and 2003 and 2010 had backup software built into it and it's free and you've already bought the software well there's a reason that professionals don't use what the backup software that Microsoft provides and that's because it's sucks um we've had clients come in again they go you know oh don't worry your server crash but we've got the we got the files from from Microsoft backup microsoft backup backed up our our data and it was just corrupted garbage and i can say this because it wasn't once it wasn't twice and it wasn't three times it was quite a few times now we would have computers that were dead they would give us their their backup data and it was it had been done in Microsoft backup and it was just just garbage it was just corrupted you couldn't use so we would suggest don't use Microsoft again use a Cronus there's a company called EMC that makes a lot of good solutions Symantec now makes backup software the whole point ransom the next thing that you need to realize is that backup there's backup different backup software for servers and there's workstations and personal computers so a server I'm not saying some computer that you you store a few files on never shares in the house that's that's not a real server when I'm talking about a server I'm talking about Microsoft Server 2008 Microsoft Server 2003 Microsoft Server 2000 server NT small business server if your computer the software the operating system gonna has server in the name that's what I'm talking about now if it does you're going to pay a premium for the backup software that you run on that computer again Acronis that we use we love I can't say enough about the workstation version the best the absolute best piece of backup software that they sell for your workstation computers or the computer that you would be working on at home or in the office cost $79 that's for the best that's that's every single feature that they can dump in there they've dumped in there for the server version that exact same software it is six hundred and ninety nine dollars gives you pretty much the same features everything that you get in the in the workstation version you get on the server version why is the server version six hundred and ninety-nine dollars because they can charge you six hundred and ninety nine dollars and no if you go out to Best Buy and you buy the normal workstation version and you try to install it on a server it'll say you have a server go buy the server software so it's true so something to think about and this is what we tell our clients is if you have a little computer and all you're doing is sharing a few files we used to guest that you use a Windows 7 or Windows Vista or Windows XP machine to store those files because things like backup software you know it's going to cost you 70 80 bucks to buy backup software for that little workstation computer where it'll cost you seven hundred dollars to buy it for a server computer so something to think about is something to realize also if you have a server this is only for servers that is running something like Microsoft Exchange the email server or Microsoft sequel server you have to make sure that the backup software that you're buying will back up your exchange server or your sequel server it's one of those those ways they they get you is you will buy the the $700 backup software from some companies but it requires add-ins to backup different types of things so when you buy the $700 backup software for your server it will backup the operating system on the server and any normal files it won't necessarily backup your Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft sequel so you may end up having to spend another $250 for an add-in for exchange another $250 for an added for sequel and $250 for you know God knows what else you have so something to realize is some some of the server backup software will pack up everything and you don't have to pay another dime for some of it they have add-ins that are required to backup certain features such as email servers or or or sequel servers so you have to make sure that before you buy the software and if you buy the software you find out it doesn't backup your experience server just off the shelf then realize you may be spending another two or three hundred dollars to get that happen so we're coming to about the end of this class and the last thing that we should talk about our online backup solutions Oh online backup solutions they're they're great things they can also be a complete pain in the butt too but but generally they're they're really great things so online backup solutions are provided by companies like Mozy comm and MOSI why comm or Carbonite or was it jungle backup I think Rackspace has an online backup solution the nice thing with these solutions is when you use them they give you the software so you're not spending $700 or $80 for the software that you use to backup your computers that's a good point when the software backs up your computers it backs all of it up online aim to the cloud so even if you're in you know Katrina happens even if your entire city gets wiped out not just your business but your home your friend's home your mama's home your sister's home even they all just get flooded out everything gets destroyed all your data is fine you can go off to Minnesota restart your business with your data those are what is really really good about these solutions what can be bad though and this is what you have to think about when you start doing online backups is all of your data has to get piped through your internet connection so when you're backing up all of your data initially when I first did this I had 500 gigs of data to backup it took a month and a half so the initial backup one can take for absolute ever to happen I mean literally literally weeks so this is a good long-term solution you want a short-term solution in case your your computer dies before the month and a half or two months but it's a good long-term solution but you have to think about that it's got a long time to pump all that data up into the net once it gets pumped up there the other problem is if a server or whatever dies and you have to grab a large amount of that data back that again you're going to have to pull that through the internet so if you have your backup data on a local external hard drive you just plug that little external hard drive and whatever you can recover your data it's pretty quick if you've got a pol 500 gigs of data out of the internet that could take a while I mean that could take two or three days just to get all of your data back so that can be a problem you also have to make sure that you do something called bandwidth throttling on your backup software so a month and a half when it's taking all that time to back up your data in all of the software whether use modes of your car right you have the ability to tell the software how much of your upload bandwidth you're going to use so if you have a DSL modem you get one cell 56k upload speed well if you don't tell it anything it will try to use that entire upload speed to do the backup and the problem is all the normal stuff that you do on the internet might start slowing or crashing while it's doing that in normal backup because it's using all of the bandwidth that is available to try to backup your software so that could be a problem so make sure you go in and you thrombus you tell it to use 100 kilobits per second or 200 kilobits per second or whatever amount doesn't doesn't kill your internet service the other problem is with online backups is you cannot do bare metal recovery so it will backup all of your documents your pictures even your exchange database and all of that so all your database software will be fine but you can't simply pull down all that data and then just plop it into a server make it run again so all the data goes off if you need to pull it down it needs to come back and go into a working computer so if your server dies you have to reinstall all the server software yada-yada-yada it's basically it's just not a bare-metal solution so that's what the online solutions are you should also realize that just like with the normal software there are business versions and consumer versions with let's say mozi comm for five dollars a month a home user can backup unlimited amount of data on to their servers for five dollars a month for for a business computer a server costs like seven dollars per month plus I don't know ten cents per gigabyte or megabyte or something and a workstation computer costs five dollars per month plus ten cents per megabyte or gigabyte there's different levels of service and all that but something that what you should realize is even for the online backup software there's different costs for the residential and for the business versions so that was a class on intro to backup solutions for your computer server so now you understand the different types of backups that occur you understand a little about the software that's used to backup your your computer or server know a little bit about online solutions and you know some of the problems the good stuff about all this the last thing that I'm going to go over something serious and you don't take it too seriously but I'll give you the warning and you can take it or leave it too many clients have lifted is when you install your backup solution the new backup solutions like most new computer things are really stable and very reliable compared to what they were a few years ago I mean old backup solutions from 10 years ago failed all the time there it is there there were a complete mess and complete pain the button new backup solutions that they're set up properly from the beginning um it run smooth I mean they just they they they work they function properly and if there's a disaster or a problem you have no issues recovering your data and everything's great the issue of this is like all things with computers all things of life there can still be problems in there can still be failures so you as a user of backup software you need to do a couple of things and whether you're the technician that deals with the server or whether you're the business owner you have to do these things and you can't you can't pum this off with somebody else or or shift the blame to somebody else because if your computer crashes you're dead your data is gone and you don't have a useful backup I mean you're out of business your how the job I mean it's it's bad so there's there's three things one whatever backup solution you use you should understand you should understand the good parts you should understand bad parts now as a technician you know if you're a technician you're like yeah the end oh crap of course I understand backup software I'm using this is more for the business owner or the user of the computer that the backup software is running on you obviously are probably not a technologist you're not an IT person but you need to understand how your backup software works and what to do if there's problem because I know what a lot of people do is they call Geek Squad or they call somebody like me we go in we install the backup software and then when there's a problem you don't necessarily call me back or Geek Squad back or whoever installed the software back you called somebody else while they walk in there's a good chance that they will not have seen the solution that you're using and if you can't explain it to them then you have a real problem so you as the owner of the backup software you need to understand how it works and what to do if there's a problem the next thing you need to do is look at the log files Christ sakes look at the log files everyone's normal what is this name well most of the new backup software whether it's online or whether it's a corona stuff that I was talking about automatically backs up your server or your computer just does it every night or whenever you set it up in because it goes through the routine and you know what 99.999% of the time it works fine it works great it goes along you don't have to think about it you don't have to press any buttons there's no user intervention whatsoever it just works and that is great that's what we want out of backup software but that point zero zero zero zero zero one percent of the time it will fail and here is a weird quirk about backup software when backup software fails it not only fails you go okay what's the worst thing it fails so it does back up one night now for some reason when backup software fails it can only shuts down the entire process so when you run that automatic software if for some reason it fails not only will it fail for one night but once it's failed it then won't back up until some user intervention fixes why it failed so you're trucking along and let's say for six months you kept a lot of files and it's always working so you forget about well six month puts in one day go by and something happens in the backup fails it will not back up your computer again until you fix why it failed so if you don't check it for three or four months your system may not be backed up for three or four months and not only that but when it failed they have corrupted the file there's a whole bunch of other stuff that goes on so you as a person who owns the backup system that owns the computer you need to regularly check your backup log files just make sure if it works all you have to do is open up the backup software looking to log and I'll say yes complete it successfully and then you're probably going to see that so you know you check it every couple of days or maybe even once a week well you know once a week is fun but don't forget about it because at some point over the years your backup will fail for whatever reason it won't back up again until somebody takes a look at it and you know if it's been a year since you've you've checked those log files that means all your last backup my pay year old the last thing that you should do generally he's verify that your backup and your recovery works what I mean is you know you have all these backup files so whether they go online or whether they go to a hard drive you know every once in a while every two or three months try to recover a few files from it you don't have to try to recover an entire server or an entire computer we just use the backup software and go in and make sure that you can pull you know five or six or a dozen files and recover them properly again a lot of software changes Microsoft is always putting out updates they saw for these of these backup software companies are putting out updates something may end up break breaking the process so if Microsoft comes out with some update that somehow breaks your backup software you may be really may be backing up your your computer but it's it's either corrupted it or it's unrecoverable somehow and you need to find a solution to it well if you never try to do a recovery you may look at a log file you say well every night it's backing up well you have no idea who's backing up to it the backup is good if you can recover it etc so once every six months every few months go ahead and give to a small recovery like I said just go into one pictures file or one one word file or document folder you know just just pull up a few files and make sure that your recovery process works so you follow those those those simple simple pieces of advice and you'll be doing well I hope you enjoyed the class so I'll see you next time

Channel: Eli the Computer Guy

Views: 240,236

Keywords: Intro, to, Backup

Id: k6dosJ9phWY

Length: 44min 9sec (2649 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2010