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Backup Appliances

General Discussion

Last Post by tnc 11 years ago

11 Posts

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glamontagne

(@glamontagne)

Posts: 89

Estimable Member

Topic starter

Does anyone out there use a backup appliance from Unitrends or Appassure? We are currently looking at both products in an effort to better backup our important servers. Any advice, experiences, thumbs up, thumbs down...etc would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Gary, Berlin, NH

Posted : March 27, 2013 4:54 am

joshua.tilson

(@joshua-tilson)

Posts: 130

Estimable Member

Gary,

Depends on what you are using currently.

We were using Symantec Backup exec 12.x on our current hardware we were able to capture one night of backup at a time.

We switched to Dell's AppAssure and using the same hardware we are now able to keep 1-2 weeks of backup data of all of our servers.

Appassure has made things amazingly easy on the backup side of things.

I do have a couple of gripes in regards to AppAssure:

1. you cannot choose to just backup a folder or a file, it is the whole drive(s) for the server, however you can choose to just backup C: and not E: for example.

2. You cannot schedule restore jobs to restore specific data at a specific time. I.E. we wanted to restore a copy of our CPS database to a report server, and wanted to schedule the software to restore that particular file to that server every morning, no go.

You can restore individual files, but as far as I can tell it is all manual.

overall I am very happy with their performance for backups.

Posted : March 27, 2013 5:32 am

glamontagne

(@glamontagne)

Posts: 89

Estimable Member

Topic starter

Hi Josh,

Currently we are using backup exec with tape drives. We have simply outgrown this method as our virtual environment has expanded. Thank you for sharing your gripes, they certainly are helpful.

Posted : March 27, 2013 5:45 am

chews on straws

(@jwollard)

Posts: 46

Trusted Member

We use Appassure.

The backup is pretty fast, the recovery is fast, however some older server (2003r2) have issues.

The replica feature is nice but has no bandwidth tools. So when it goes to replicate it can use up your entire pipe.

I give it a B-, usable but fancy replication features need polishing.

Posted : March 29, 2013 1:45 am

joshua.tilson

(@joshua-tilson)

Posts: 130

Estimable Member

chews on straws said:

I give it a B-, usable but fancy replication features need polishing.

What version of AppAsure are you using? We are on 4.7 and waiting for the in place upgrade path to version 5, I can hope they added something like that in 5 right?

Posted : March 29, 2013 1:51 am

chews on straws

(@jwollard)

Posts: 46

Trusted Member

yea. We are on 5, we started there.

The new web interface is a bit slow, but the fundamental pros of AppAssure are there.

1. Quick Restores

2. Storage Dedupe

3. Network DeDupe

However When you turn on site replication it just sends it with a full copy.

So we tried replicating to a remote site but it saturated the line.

Posted : March 29, 2013 1:57 am

joshua.tilson

(@joshua-tilson)

Posts: 130

Estimable Member

I think what they recommend is to do the initial replication in the off hours because it does send all the data, but after that it should be less data being replicated to the remote core.

We don't use the replication feature, but instead the "Hot stand by" and after the first initial massive push the amount of bandwidth used is minimal. Just keep the sync times minimal 1 hour or less and there should be no problems after.

either that or do what they call a seed, and manually move that data to the remote core.

Posted : March 29, 2013 2:00 am

chews on straws

(@jwollard)

Posts: 46

Trusted Member

I agree that is the correct method. On version 5. Appassure would have issues where it would send a whole new base image during the middle of the day. AFTER the initial sync.

All of a sudden the line would be saturated to our remote replication site.

When you setup Microsoft DPM you can set bandwidth restrictions for different parts of the day in the event of a large backup.

Posted : March 29, 2013 2:04 am

chews on straws

(@jwollard)

Posts: 46

Trusted Member

I have retired my AppAssure server and switched back to DPM.

Not because it does not have features or nice stats, but because it is not reliable and Dell support on the product is really bad. Weeks to respond, weeks to escalate.

When you have a problem with MS DPM, someone else has had it, posted a fix and it works.

When you get to a point where you have no backup for a week(s) and you are waiting on support to contact you back. You have to make a choice, that is what did it for me.

Posted : May 6, 2013 11:57 pm

glamontagne

(@glamontagne)

Posts: 89

Estimable Member

Topic starter

Hi Chews, thank you for the feedback on Appasure. We ended up going with Unitrends as the pricing for Appasure just wasn't feasible. Since day one, our backups have worked perfectly without the slightest hiccup. I can't say that about Symantec Backup Exec. Support has been great at checking in to see how we are doing and if I have any questions yet. I've done a few test restores and found them to be lightning fast. I highly recommend their appliances.

Posted : May 7, 2013 12:04 am

tnc

(@tnc)

Posts: 517

Honorable Member

I know this is an old thread but I have had really good luck with Appassure but I will agree with the comments about Dell support.

As far as throttling back the bandwidth, I locked the port on the switch to 100mbit to make sure any transfers would not overload the network or any of my backed up machines. There is no way Appassure would ever be able to exceed 100mbit that way.

If I ever need to depend on it for a restore I could set the port on the switch back to 1000mbit. My eventual road map includes a "backup network" which will utilize a closed non routable subnet for backups. There is no way that traffic would ever be on my machines that way. This can be done with old (retired) switches so it wouldn't cost any more except for some NICs. I am 95% virtual anyway so maybe just a few patch cables

Mike Zavolas

Tallahassee Neurological Clinic

Posted : September 5, 2013 7:26 am

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