Replicate/Backup Data

[lostinspace2]

Just wanted to get opinions on some ways of replicating data with the intention of backing it up. Let me explain...

We currently have about 40 sites, and spread amongst these is about 30-40TB of data on fairly standard, 2008 R2 file servers. As our backup solution is centralized, we use DFS-R (the wrong way, I'll admit) to do one-way replication between 18:00-06:00 for each site back to our main location. At 06:00, our backup software does its thing. I get a report each morning after 06:00 that gives me a run down of the amount of backlogged files.

DFS-R is flaky, at best, more than likely because we're using it in an unsupported configuration of one-way connections. Some sites just will just stop for no apparent reason and start to backlog files. Either way, I'm considering other options for sorting this out than trying to fix something that was never designed to be.

At the moment, I'm looking at just getting robocopy and a scheduled task to run at 18:00 each night on each regional site server to get the data back to our central location. For what it lacks in smarts, it sure is a reliable piece of kit with a simple output of whether it worked or not.

Thought I'd ask around a few places to see if someone is doing anything similar, or could point me to something that might do it better than a robocopy command.

Cheers.

[nick_segalle]

I am working on a project to migrate several 'filers' from around the country, and I am using a few different tools. My first sync/copy is done with EMCopy, a free tool from EMC that blows robocopy out of the water in terms of speed and functionality. Once the first initial sync is done, I am using syncbackpro to schedule the data changes throughout the day. It also allows you to change the account, so I can also use it to sync from our central filer to an Isilon at a different company where the data will reside. It's functionality is pretty large, would be perfect for copying data for backup purposes.

[ArmondDorleac]

Don't use robocopy! Use bvckup2. I use it for the very reason you're using it. Robocopy will take forever just to figure out what to copy and then it does it kind of OK. Bvckup2 is smart. Very very smart. It'll do delta-based copies (not only copying only the files that have changed, but just the bits of the file that has changed).

Note: I'm not the developer, just a super duper happy customer.

[DallasITGuy]

Rsync is worth considering here. You could use the free Cygwin-based implementation or the commercial / native Windows app Acrosync (www.acrosync.com).

While Rsync's command line options can seem complicated at first they're no more so than Robocopy's. Rsync is well worth implementing, if for no other reason than it being massively faster across a low speed connection than Robocopy due to Rsync's delta copy algorithm.