Lux Interior asks:
"Help! I am the ad-hoc computer guy in a small satellite office of a larger company. We have no CIO, no IT department, and no policies whatsoever as regards data retention or backup. Therefore, a lot of company property exists one place-- on individual hard drives. The office is made of almost entirely of rudimentary users, on WIN98 and 2000 machines, who never, ever, back up any company information. Has anyone out there had experiences in a small-office setting with: changing users' behavior in regards to managing their data; setting up best practices for backing up information properly; and making sure that the most computer-apathetic users comply with what you've put in place?" Sometimes the best way to make users conform to policy is to not give them a choice in the first place. Automated backup systems on each workstation can go a long way in helping this. Which software packages have such functionality (the more unobtrusive, the better)?
"Several weeks ago we lost six years' worth of extremely important data on current and continuing projects that not even a data recovery service could get back. As a consequence, it is now my job to make sure this doesn't happen again. I have an offsite data storage service retained, but now, how do I get people to back up their files to our file server so I can back up our data from one location? (Also, having the data backed up on our file server of course means that most inadvertent deletions can quickly be fixed in-house).
This is all taking place in a Windows environment, with an NT 4.0 file server, and I am far from an experienced Sysadmin.
Fun, Fun, Fun.
Any input from slashdot readers would be great, and save me much dyspepsia, insomnia, and general hassle."
go around and delete all user data regularly (Score:4, Funny)
Re:go around and delete all user data regularly (Score:4, Funny)
That'll teach them to backup, and get you beer tokens
Re:go around and delete all user data regularly (Score:4, Insightful)
A twist of a thumb screw, a poping off of the side pannel, an unplug, and putting it back together is all it takes to convince most users that their hard drive has crashed. Then take their machine away from them, give them a blank machine for a couple of days of sweating it, then bring it back talking of all the heroic measures you've had to go to.
Now you're a hero for saving their data and you've driven the same message home.
If you want to do it to the entire office in one go, come in one night, do it, then tell them that there was a power surge. Fix the machines belonging to people who control your promotions either impressively quickly, or sufficiently slowly to convince them that what you do really matters to them.
ugh. domain logons and remote 'my documents' dirs (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, this is easy. (Score:3, Informative)
All of the Windows machines are on a domain that's handled by the same central server running Samba. They can log into any Windows machine, and all of their preferences and files are there waiting for them.
Backups are done nightly to a DLT 8000 drive that hangs off of the central server. This has saved people's asses many times when a machine blows up (sometimes literally).
With 120gig drives as cheap as they are, and entry level robotic tape changers on the market for less than $10,000, there's no reason anyone should have to suffer through a loss of critical amounts of data.
I sleep very well at night with this arrangement.
Workstations bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
sPh
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:2)
Signed up for an account with a real name from a real address in the companies home town. 15 minutes later the security director gets a call from their account rep that they believe someone maliciously tried to gain access.
Did quite a few people get concerned over this? Was there a risk of damaging their reputation with the client? Did it cost lots of time? Absolutely. But now the president of that company knows that his staff has been properly trained in security procedures, and he thought that was more valuable than the harm (potential and otherwise) that was caused.
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not testing a disaster recovery plan, that's deliberately destroying user data so you can say "See, I'm right, neener."
Well, not if he just unplugs the drive and puts a scare into the user. Let 'em sweat for a couple of hours, then manage to fix the problem and let them know how incredibly lucky they are the power cord just worked its way loose and it wasn't a real hard drive crash that would have wiped out their data, something that is a lot more common.
It'll drive the point home in a non-destructive manner, which may be the best thing one can do. It is human nature not to learn such lessons until they blow up in your face
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't just pulling the disk out, fully intact, and putting in an empty one the same as a total hard disk failure? When you're done, put the right drive back in.
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:2, Informative)
Lastly you don't have to do damage to data at all. Give it time and people will mess up. Then if you restore the stuff quickly, they will start using/trusting you more.
I do agree with putting the "My Documents" folder on a universal share. The only issue that could come is space and reliability. If the NT box dies regularly or you are running low on space a lot, this will cause issues.
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:2)
But is your Backup Data Still Fresh? Fabulous! (Score:3, Informative)
MAKE DAMN SURE YOUR BACKUPS WORK, OR YOU'LL LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT.
Speaking as a former idiot *koff*, that goes without saying.
Any backup system should be tested and shaken-down to verify that data is recoverable. (Then again, any good autobackup system should have a Verify Mode, and a log of the backup to review the morning after.)
The amount of blood, sweat, toil, tears, and non-comped off hours will be worth it.
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:3, Informative)
Backups for workstations are difficult and troublesome. I've never seen this work worth a flying turd in any kind of production evironment.
Far and away, your best bet is to migrate everyone to start saving ALL company data on a file server, preferably with some kind of RAID array for redundancy purposes. Again, as the parent post had pointed out, it's a relatively simple process to migrate everyone's "My Documents" and such to some share on your file server. If you're running Win2K, active directory can help out with this tremendously, but poledit for NT should work just fine - you might even be able to get away with something simple in the guise of logon scripts, reg files, etc.
The sacrificial lamb is also good advice - it may seem a little underhanded, but believe you me - your point will be made in a way that will stick to even the "I-can't-be-bothered-to-learn-how" types. Remember, these are tyically the ones who will be the first to crucify you in the event they lose something, and the ones you'll need to make the point across to the most.
As far as physical backups go, if you're pretty well sold on NT as the platform, then BackupExec form Veritas is a great package that I've had excellent results from, but it ain't cheap.
If you can manage to get away with using a Linux/*BSD/whatever running Samba for your file server, you may have some luck with some open source backup software (much more economical, but you will need to hit the books to get it done right without some consultants). They're pretty good from what I hear, but I haven't had much of a chance to play with them.
You'll also want a tape drive and robotic loader for your file server. These ain't cheap either, but believe me you can sell it to the suits as a necessary expense. Unless they don't value their data, that is.
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? I'm really trying to figure out why people keep whinging about this.
The data was backed up. There is no data loss. The only thing lost is time, and frankly, you'll wind up way the hell ahead on that when it fails for real and it's just a matter of restoring data instead of trying to figure out just what the user had stored on their local drive instead of the network drive.
Equally important, it'll let you actually test your restore capabilities and make sure that everyone involved knows what to do.
Unethical? No. The guy said to get permission and agreement from the upper level managers to do exactly this. Ethics are covered. As for honesty - sorry, but it is at times necessary to lie in order to prevent greater harm.
Users don't listen - they're bombarded with too many policies that seem random from their POV. Unless you make it clear what the consequences are a good number of random policies will be ignored because of it.
I do not trust you or anyone else here who condones that behavior to manage my network in a responsible manner
It's sad to see that you'd rather blindly trust an untested plan than to trust someone who not only implements a plan, but ensures that it actually works. And does so properly - by getting management approval instead of just letting something happen.
And if you don't think something will happen, well, I guess you don't need data backup then.
Re:Workstations bad. (Score:4, Informative)
Waivers! (Score:4, Insightful)
~Philly
Re:Waivers! (Score:2)
Re:Waivers! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Waivers! (Score:5, Informative)
Just setup a pop-up window (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway here is a more non confrontational method. Just setup a user policy and have it downloaded automatically when each user logs in. In that policy map the users default drive on the server. Make sure the users name is on each subfolder on the servers main backup folder. This will make a big difference to clueless lusers when they see there name on a folder that ms-word tries to automatically save in. You may want to put a greeting pop up message in their profile when each user logs in and telling them to save there files with the directory with there name on it. THen send an email out to everyone and warn them that hard drives tend to fail and just tell them to save all their work with the folder with their name on it. Sounds simple. right?
The program to do this is called poledit and its on the windows cd. To have the profile downloaded automatically you need to create the profiles and then go to user manager and setup it up to download automatically when each user logs in. This is what I would do. If shit hits the fan you can tell management what you did with the pop-up messages, the email's and the profiles and that it was the users fault. With all of these things combined, the blame factor will move away from you and towards the user. Unless of course the server dies.
But I advise not to have users sign anything. It makes them angry and uncomfortable and they could get you in trouble. Remember that IT is customer service just like any entry level job. The customer is always first and its your job and not there's to make sure the data is backed up.
Re:Are you stupid? (Score:2)
You mean like this:
? That's from Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3.
Re:Are you stupid? (Score:2)
We know Ralph is "special". Ralph knows Ralph is "special". somehow I don't think he'd be too shocked if he were to fail english.
My backups (Score:3, Informative)
I LOVE this service: Connected Online Backup [connected.com]. For $14.95 a month, it's "unlimited" backup over the Internet. "Unlimited", with restrictions, of course. :) It's not intended for backing up your entire hard disk including operating system, it's intended for documents and other data files. Theoretically, you're not supposed to back up media files either, although they haven't really said anything about my MP3 collection backup.
They also have a corporate service, where they back up all the workstations of your company, which is where I think they really target their services. It's great: You just install the software, and the backups take care of themselves every day.
I really like the user interface as well. It allows picking and choosing which directories / files to include or exclude, as well as file types. It also lets you restore multiple versions in the past.
Highly recommended.
Re:My backups (Score:2)
I should also add that their backups are "smart", in the sense that it compares new versions of files with the old versions of files (including binary files) and only transfers the differences. So my 200 megabyte outlook file typically takes only a few meg to backup every day, and less than that after it compresses it.
Encrypted? (Score:2)
Re:Encrypted? (Score:2)
Yes, I forgot to mention that, too. It's encrypted and the pass phrase stays on the user's system. In fact, the company tells you "don't lose the passphrase or your data is history". :)
network drives (Score:2, Interesting)
rule through the fear of force (Score:5, Informative)
Warn them a week in advance, warn them a day in advance.
Then, in the middle of the night, format everyone's machines and stick fresh OS installs on all of them. If possible, ghost one machine's fresh install and use it everywhere. Then, the only backup you have to worry about is the H: drive.
If anyone ever has a computer problem, just reghost their drive, removing whatever pointless software (screen savers, comet cursor, kazaa, etc) that got installed and caused the problem.
Minimal hassle for you, easy backups, and everyone will fear you.
Re:rule through the fear of force (Score:2, Insightful)
Before you try anything like this, make certain you can outmaneuver anybody's political BS. One phone call to _your_ boss by the right person could be very bad.
Politics around here is so bad that one department bought a single (external parallel port) ZIP 100 and managed to get the IT folks to send someone around once a week, moving the ZIP, to back up every machine.
Your best bet, get your superior on board no matter what you do, and get your a$$ covered on paper.
Re:rule through the fear of force (Score:2)
Also, I recommend you put tightVNC on the machines, set it so that it can only be connected to from your IP address (registry setting), and you now have remote control (or viewing) of your entire network. Show this to your boss, he will be impressed, show it to the employees, they will be afraid.
If that isn't enough control, I also recommend you setup a squid proxy for outgoing connections so you can monitor and cache web data.
One thing to take note of (in reference to the above message in this thread) -- only ghost machines with the same exact hardware!
Re:rule through the fear of force (Score:3, Insightful)
You HAVE to enforce this; put a policy in place that all critical data must be stored on the central server; any locally stored data is not your responsibility and cannot be recovered.
With that done, set up your backups with relevant retention/rotation and go from there.
The only possible spanner is if you have a slow network and the users need large files and they complain about performance. In that case, use the "My Documents" folder and centrally store the network profiles; that way they'll get written to the server on logout and can be backed up as normal.
Formalized Procedure Name (Score:2)
My general strategy would be similar, EXCEPT for the CEO. Just backup his data after he goes home, and compliment him on how well he's backing stuff up. Then when everyone complains about backing up, he'll well - back you up - so to speak.
Re:rule through the fear of force (Score:2)
Novell's iFolder (Score:3, Interesting)
Every time a file on either the server side or the workstation side updates, the client makes the same changes (note: changes, not the entire file, so if you change 1 sentance on a 30 MB document, you only change the few bytes of code).
We're going to try this out at my Day job for our Laptop user types, but so far, it's looking cool. Novell has mentioned future support for OS X (which I don't believe, but I'm an eternally hoping idiot.)
No idea why this is funny (Score:3, Insightful)
Then when Level 1 support can't fix the problem by doing a 3 finger salute (Ctrl-Alt-Del) then they simple redeploy the build.
/b
Use candy, not stick. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then, in the middle of the night, format everyone's machines and stick fresh OS installs on all of them. If possible, ghost one machine's fresh install and use it everywhere. Then, the only backup you have to worry about is the H: drive.
You're offloading system administration tasks on the users, and giving them an drop-dead ultimatim. Not cool. No fallback. You'll cause much harm.
Instead try billing it as an "upgrade". That way they'll take any inconvenience as a side-effect of something useful to them, rather than as you deliberately screwing up their data and lives to make your job easier.
Also:
Do it by departments, workgroups, or segments of the cube farm, in stages.
Start with a very small group. You get to work the kinks out with a minimum of trouble if something went wrong, and the group will spread the word to other users on how to ease the transistion. That will let you do larger groups later.
Don't just format their disks. Swap 'em out for fresh ones and keep the old disks handy. Help the users recover any data from the swapped out disks for a few days, check that they've got all they need, maybe back the disks up just in case. THEN format them and swap them IN on the next group of victims.
Make a point of how much extra work you're doing to be SURE they don't lose any important data during the transition (even though you're not doing all THAT much extra). And of course harp on how the main point of the upgrade is to protect their data in the future (which IS true).
HMMMM.... (Score:2)
Re:HMMMM.... (Score:2)
uh...Why? There are far harder things to do out there than write up a few batch files to back up all the mapped drives and tell the server to run at midnight every night.
Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Easy (Score:2, Informative)
Nice thing about amanda is it self adjusts. Someone takes a laptop home for three days, comes back, and amanda will pick up where is left off. Nice.
No way... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been in this situation with dozens of companies, and policy only takes root when error rears its ugly head.
Sometimes the errors cost headaches, sometimes they cost you a lawsuit.
Re:No way... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called reactive management,...
Kevin
Backup Policy (Score:2, Interesting)
but be ready to install disk quotas. You'll be suprised at the number of twinks who will backup his/her ENTIRE C drive.
Re:Backup Policy (Score:2)
A quick cursory check one evening yielded 7 gigabytes worth of CD's. MS office, Windows, PC Anywhere... and this guy didn't work in our department!!!
Strange how quotas came about the very next year.
This reminds me of an idea I got (Score:2)
So what do you all think? Who wants to fund me $10MM to get this off the ground?
SMB + tar + bash = safe data (Score:2, Interesting)
edge
Backup for Real Estate agents? (Score:2)
Does such a system exist?
Re:Backup for Real Estate agents? (Score:2)
I mentioned this in another post, but this is what you want: Connected Online Backup [connected.com]. My Mother In Law is an office manager, and I set up her system with it. $14.95/month, and it works perfectly. Even if their on a modem, it's not bad. Only a few minutes every night. It's awesome.
Don't allow them to use their local hard drives (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, get a good back-up scheme on your file server, which I assume you already have, and you won't have anymore data loss problems. It also removes accountability from you. You manage the computer systems. Tell users that IT is simply not responsible for data lost off their local HDs. If they ignore you and then lose data, shrug your shoulders and point to IS policy. That'll learn 'em and learn 'em fast.
You're probably out of luck. (Score:2, Insightful)
Even more unfortunately, an automated backup system probably won't help either. With a mixed environment like that, you're going to find that most users have data scattered all over their hard drives, making it virtually impossible to backup anything less than the entire drive. Not a good idea if you're dealing with any more than 5 to 10 users.
The best idea in this case would probably be along the lines of having each individual user move all their important files into one directory tree. Don't even tell them it's for the purpose of backing up, because then they probably won't do it. Make up some story about viruses destroying random data, and tell them that this is part of a prevention method. It sounds totally idiotic, but they'll believe it...instilling fear is usually the best way to go. Once they've moved everything, make sure they know to keep all their data files in that same directory tree from then on, and set up a scheduled backup on each machine - hopefully to a networked tape library or network drive of some sort.
Give this a few months, and get them used to keeping their data in a very specific place, and then start giving them network storage space to use instead. It will make the backup process a lot easier, and you'll be able to do it daily instead of once every week or so.
In any case, you have to approach this very SLOWLY, or you'll freak them out and they won't be any help at all. Baby steps, man...baby steps.
Although a Cattle Prod May Help.... (Score:3, Informative)
We have a server with a large-enough tape drive to back up users' data. We then encourage people EXTREMELY to save important data to their personal LAN Drive, and eeinforce the idea that the Hard Drive should be considered expendible. No excuses, no tears.
We then back up the data nightly and rotate tapes daily during the work week (M-T-W-TH, and Weekly Friday Tapes, with the Last Friday of the Month going on rotating Monthly Tapes.
It a bit of habit-breaking for people used to saving everything to C-Drive, but a little Pavlovian experience of "Ohmigosh, my file is gone!/Oh wow, you got my file back!" will reinforce people that Hard Drives Are Bad/LAN Drive is Good.
You can even reinforce the idea with encouraging people backing up files on floppies/CD R/W Drives.
Re:Although a Cattle Prod May Help.... (Score:2)
First off, spend a great deal of time explaining your position to everyone and remind them that they just lost 6 years of work. Since they are computer users and not admins, you might even want to gather comments - there'll be a fair bit of noise but you might catch a few good questions (ie: what's a directory? is it like a folder? how is it possible to have an H: when it goes ABCD?)
After the introductory period is over, explain that files will be moved to the LAN. Every so often (random, 1..5 days sounds about right) schedule a script to collect up all
Put notes on everyone's computer that night saying "your work has been moved to H:\slave-number-512\work" and maybe some instructions on how to get to that folder.
A few people will freak - "Ohmigosh, my file is gone!" and you'll teach them how to get the files again - "Oh wow, you got my file back!". (great example LittleGuy!)
All versions of Windows I've worked with include registry settings for setting a default Program Files folder, My Documents folder, etc. Change those to point to the user's folder and you've just saved them the "GRRR I hate that I have to click on THIS, then THIS then go into THIS dir.. why can't it just point me there FIRST?".
Keeping people educated won't fix the problem but it includes them in the solution. There might be people who resist anything - but if they interfere with your job, step up your actions. Talk with them, then try something slightly drastic (removing their MyDoc folder?) then talk again, then their boss, then something very drastic ("my files are gone!!!" "there was a surge last night and we had to restore with our backups...") with approvals from higher-ups.
I hate to draw this kind of comparison, but it's very similar to how you litter-train a pet. You collect their shit, put it somewhere else and eventually they learn to put their shit in the right place.
Re:Although a Cattle Prod May Help.... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Rotate tapes on/off site weekly. This means two complete backup tape sets. There are many services that will do this for you, check your yellow pages.
2. At least quarterly, one complete backup (not incremental or differential) tape set should be pulled from the lineup, and placed in long term, off-site storage.
3. If you don't want the hassles of #2, use a real-time backup utilty like NSIsoftware's DoubleTake (I used to work for them), there are also other similar products. This method requires a second computer with enough disk space to hold all your data. It's a different hassle, but perhaps easier to deal with.
4. VERIFY your backup system at least monthly. Read back data from the backup media and perform test restores.
5. DOCUMENT your plan and proceedures. Keep the documentation in several places, on-site and off so that in the event of disaster (server, site, or responsible person) others can retrieve the information.
If you take posession and responsibility for your users' data, YOU will be blamed if it is not recoverable when needed.
Been there - had the headache (Score:3, Insightful)
So, you have two options: (1) If you have reasonablu fast network connections, take the choice away and install automated workstation-to-server software that runs every night. This won't work for roaming laptop users though. (2) Hold a series of "computer training classes". Say 4 or 5 half-hour classes where you teach e-mail ettiqute, tips and tricks, Internet searching, that sort of thing. Make them mandatory (you can usually finagle this through the HR or Training group of the parent org). At one of the classes, discuss backup, then pull out a form stating "I have attended the backup class and understand the consequences of failing to back up my work. My department and I accept full responsibility for failing to use backup tools provided". Require them to sign and turn it in (again, HR and Training will usually help with this). Send copies to the department heads.
That won't prevent data loss (or even the loss of your job if something goes wrong!), but it will help somewhat and also get at least some people thinking.
sPh
Leaving backup to users? (Score:2)
employment contract (Score:2)
Same Thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Hope this helps
variation (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd suggest a variation; reformat their drives with a fairly small primary partition. That way you'll get the speed of a modern drive with the same effect.
Then, once people are used to saving their data on the network drive, you can create a secondary partition with an odd drive assignment for "personal use".
Keep it simple. (Score:2)
If you need periodic complete system backups get some removable hard drive bays, some 100GB disks and Mondo [microwerks.net]
Been there (Score:2)
The way we fixed it was to have one of our developers write a small Windows prog for us (I think in Visual Basic?) that had a standard Windows Explorer interface to select folders and such to be backed up, then wrote a small
I think it took him about 5-6 hours to create the program. It was great, I was very grateful to have a developer who knew something about writing small programs for Windows.
Use a mapped drive (Score:4, Informative)
Then become the data gestapo and slowly, kindly, patiently drill it into their head to always save things into "My documents." If they ask you to help them with their computer, and you see files that should be in the "My docs" folder, move them there, after they get used to always loading stuff from there, they will get used to saving there too.
The key is patience and Persistence. Practice your waitress smile! ;)
Stupid is as stupid does... you need mgmnt support (Score:2, Informative)
Users aren't going to do *anything* they don't prefer to do, and you have no way of compelling them to do the "right" thing. The post about domain logons and establishing "My Documents" on the network server is excellent, but the users could still save everything on their C: drive. (They probably will because a network share is usually slower than the local hard drive, and they're used to using C:.)
My recommendation would be to gain and establish management support for a backup policy. To do this, you will have to demonstrate to management the risks inherent in not compelling users to back up their data - such as loss of operational data, client lists, engineering data, etc.
Ideally, management would issue an edict that specified that employees were responsible for cooperating with your backup regimen.
Short of this, it ain't gonna happen, because users are basically "stupid". (Defined as shortsighted, unable to see the big picture, unable to imagine loss of data, etc.) And without a real enforceable policy with disciplinary measures in place, they are going to skirt the policy, count on it.
Use Retrospect (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Use Retrospect (Score:2)
Retrospect (Score:2)
Buy Retrospect from Dantz. Make your life easy. (Score:4, Insightful)
You buy a TAPE DRIVE. Do not buy a cd-rw. Buy TAPE. Get DDS-3 dat, or VXA, or AIT, or DLT. Make your life easy, buy an autoloader. Make sure retrospect supports it (they have a list). Buy enough tape capacity to back up all the files on all the hard drives without you having to sit and change tapes for hours on end. Retrospect will automate the entire deal so you just need to be there to pick up the pay check.
Someone will give you grief about the cost of tape drive. Tell them to FUCK OFF. Tape drives are CHEAP compared to how much it'll cost your company to LOSE DATA. Buy LOTS of tapes.
With this, you back up EVERYTHING. The first part of a new backup is a pain, but from then on in Retrospect will just back up the changed files, making life very easy. Use multiple tape sets and rotate so you always keep a couple of good backups around.
I can't stress this enough, back up EVERYTHING. Do not say "I will only back up 'my documents'". People save their files all over the damned place and never know where they are. They delete stupid system files they didn't know what they were for. Once you're over the pain of the first full backup, which can take a couple of days depending on the size of your place it's easy and the incrementals are fast. And you can do DISASTER RECOVERY. As in "my hard drive crashed and I lost everything, please restore my computer to the way it was". You can point, click, blast everything onto a new drive in the machine and the machine runs exactly as it used to.
Do not wait for disaster to happen to try this, after you get a backup under your belt. Go through the restore procedure. Get another hard drive and practise doing complete system restores so that you can do it in your sleep when your CEO calls you at 2am to find his deleted girlie pictures.
If you can do this, your cow-orkers will love you. Women will love you. Men will want to BE you.
Dramatic maybe, but I'm a damned happy user of Retrospect for years and it has saved my ass more times than I can count. There are other products (Backup Exec) but I have not used them, and so I cannot vouch for them. I use Retrospect every day.
Re:Buy Retrospect from Dantz. Make your life easy. (Score:3, Informative)
Additional clarification: Buy a good tape drive. Do not let cost be your guide; buy the best-rated drive you can find. Again, if they give you grief about the drive's cost, the parent poster's advice still applies.
I used to work at $(MUMBLE_SALTPILE_MUMBLE), whose IT department was staffed by people of diminished capacity. One day, due to a re-org, they physically moved a server containing critical data. Somehow, the move killed the drives. So they went to restore from backups.
During the restore, the drive ate itself and the tape. Backup destroyed.
Now, because the IT department had the aforementioned staff of diminished capacity, the next available backup was a week old (it turns out they were doing daily backups serially onto the same tape, because it was "faster").
So the lessons here are:
Schwab
Get a tape drive and Retrospect (Score:2, Informative)
Retrospect can easily be configured to yell at users that haven't been backed up in a certain amount of time, to either back up their entire machine or just a part of it, etc. You'll still have to get users to leave their computers on, but that'll be the extent of it.
I prefer whole-machine backups; everywhere I've used Retrospect, that's what we've done. Retrospect is smart, so it won't back up 10 copies of an identical file just because each one is on a different computer. And Retrospect also does incremental backups out of the box, so you're only backing up what changed *and* you can restore a machine to exactly the state it was at at the time of any given backup.
Sorry for the commercial, but I've been using Retrospect for my own network for 6 years now and have done work for shops that use it for 9, and I have yet to see a better backup solution.
Backup solution (Score:2)
1. Map My Documents to a remote share on your file server, backup that drive, and setup policies so that data can't get saved locally.
2. Tell the users that local data may be deleted at any time, and they're supposed to use the space you setup at \\file_server\home_directories. Have a nice long meeting drilling in the point, then remind them the day before (do it in the morning and right after lunch) that you'll be deleting local files overnight. Do a fresh install of your OS of choice, configure it to access the home directory of whatever user is logged in, then ghost it over. This has the advantage that any computer is sufficient for the user's needs, as every computer is identically configured.
3. This is the least intrusive, and thus probably best. But I didn't see it mentioned yet (browsing at +1), so thought I'd say it. Most Windows machines share their drives out by default under administrative names... \\computer_name\c$, \\computer_name\d$, etc. You may need to configure Win98 to share out its drives, but thats trivial. Have a network backup server that just backs up the contents of each of these shares in turn. The users never even need to know that you did it, until something bad happens
Probably no great loss... (Score:2)
Only by losing everything are we free to do anything. -- Tyler Durden
I would set up the system so that people can make it work and tell people clearly how to use it (as some have said, setting "My Documents" to be on a server is a good idea). From that point on, it's darwinism -- those who don't care (like me) or can't grok it will lost data and those who do can save themselves.
It Comes To This . . . (Score:2)
(a) Fool them, or,
(b) Scare them
But you sure as hell can't trust them. They're users, remember? It ends up being akin to herding some sort of animal. Usually cats. Although I've heard it called a goat rodeo as well.
So, take route (a): re-map all writable directories to the server and lock down the rest. Or take route (b): secretly back up a drive and then crash it to put the fear of [insert deity of choice (BOFH is a deity)] in them.
Not saying anything anyone else didn't, just trying to conglomerate all the reasons and routes in one post.
Wintendo Backups? (Score:2)
Give them all a pretty icon on the desktop to their own folder on a central file server. Name it "My Documents" or something. Tell them to copy all their important files to it, and to save all their work to this folder in the future. Pull a little BOFH a week later by swaping the hard drive of some guy in marketing with a defective one. If he backed up his files send out an email praising him, and if not send out an email making an example of him and tell him off about how many hours you had to screw around with the ACME hard drive utiltiy to get his files back.
Don't let them (Score:2)
Twoflower
Provide a network drive and back it up (Score:2)
It's up to the owners of critical data to make sure that critical documents and their revisions are being saved to a Network drive and not "C:\My Documents"
-josh
Arrgh... (Score:2)
The only people that use them are people data important enough that they know they'll get in a LOT of trouble should it go away, and people that have lost data before. The average person still doesn't save their documents and data until something bad happens. I've done all I can do, the rest is up to them. They aren't children and we've explained the risks. I've had Directors lose very critical data and my boss and the CIO have always said "Too bad, you told everyone where to put the data to be backed up. Their own fault.".
Keep in mind... (Score:2)
Set up the file server nicely (if possible) in the first place. I would recommend an inexpensive Promise IDE RAID (they're cheap, fast, and reasonably reliable). The number of drives will determine what kind of RAID strategy you'll take, but be sure to include redundancy in the hard drives themselves.
Make sure permissions are set properly. Set up a user for each workstation to access their files on the central server.
Disable all unnecessary services on the file server. Install the latest service pack and hotfix packages. A good virus scan program will be helpful as well, and perhaps a software firewall if you don't have another solution implemented.
Good luck.
Take some liquid nitrogen. (Score:2)
In fact, take a HUGE amount of liquid nitrogen. Pump it into the ground, below the bedrock, with as much force as possible. Then, when hell freezes over, users might start backing up their own data.
:-)
Have a central backup (Score:2)
Make sure you can restore systems from what is available in that directory though, all the backups in the world don't do a bit of good if you can't do a restore afterwards
Make them take responsibility (Score:2)
Send out a document, get everyone to read it and sign it. Show them how to store their data in an area that will be backed up. Let them know that any data they do not store there will NOT be backed up. And let them know that when their hard drives crash, it is THEIR responsibility if they have lost any data.
Of course, you'll need management buy-in for this. I must say, though, that it is kind of a shame that Windows makes this difficult. At the university I attended [ualberta.ca], all the computing science machines mounted their home directories from one of several file servers. Those file servers were religiously backed up and so the loss of any individual workstation was entirely unimportant.
Win32 backup client for AMANDA backup server (Score:2)
Free backups, as long as you have a tape drive and backup server of some sort.
BSA would be glad to help (Score:2)
Call your friendly BSA today for a complete backup audit! Vaseline(tm) optional.
Management Support (Score:3, Insightful)
First, write a policy for users to follow (not more than a page), get your boss to sign it, and then distribute copies. This tells everyone that the boss is behind this. If your boss does not have line authority over the people in question then get someone who does.
Second, get your boss's approval for a half hour tutorial for all staff on the subject, attendance mandatory for all users including him/herself. Get the boss to start with a brief repeat of the disaster story, then hand over to you (write the boss a script if necessary). Tell people why they need to do it and what it is they need to do, but obviously don't go into techie detail. Also emphasise that unsafe behaviour is letting the team down: its not just your work at risk, its everyones.
Its your responsibility to determine policy, configure machines, tell people what to do, monitor progress, and report to your boss. This can and should include saying that certain users are refusing to following departmental policy. Its then his/her job to take things further, upt to and including disciplinary action if necessary. Its not likely to be necessary: few people are that boneheaded.
Good luck. Culture change is hard, but its one of the most valuable things you can do.
Paul.
I'll take the bait... (Score:3, Insightful)
One of my first customers was a NAACP trial lawer. Every day one of his jeloppy win95 machines would take a shit, and every day I would fix it. I would constantly remind him how he needed NT workstation instead of 95.
When it came time for billing we would always go around in the same circle, "Now Wobbert (he had the elmer fudd ebonic accent) Why am I gettin chwarged 5 times for the same fix?"
To which I would respond, "Because you broke it 5 times!"
Then his killer statement would come, "Well then shouldn't you have fixed it right the first time so it wouldn't break again?"
To which I would go into why 95 was a POS and NT4.0 was alot better. Then we would go into costs and I would show him how his long term maintenence cost would drop if he made the switch. It never really registered with him though.
I also made the pitch to him about having a centralized server for his employee's to store data on. He just could not understand that this computer wasn't for the employee's to use nilly willy as they pleased.
I feel for you man, just run while you still have some sanity left.
Backup Policies (Score:4, Insightful)
**** NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BACKUP WORKSTATIONS ****
Got my point?
Instead, go out and buy a cheap server. You can get a AtlonXP 1800 w/ 512MB of RAM and 100 GB of disk for around 200-400 dollors if you put it together yourself. From there map all drives. If you ever get stuck in a situation where you back up the PC's
A) It will get difficult to wean users off of later.
B) Builds bad saving practice. To comply with document policies, you really must centralize where your documents are.
C) Backup software tends to fail/hide/be to verbose when too many boxes are used.
If you absolutly have to backup workstations, look at network backup products like Veritas or Seagate software (err. they may have sent the product to some other company). Ask a user explicitly for a single directory to backup.
For servers, a image level backup is always a good idea. It tends to be the different between 3-4 hours recovery time and 12-24 hours.
Anyways, that's my advice.
Backup Procedures.... (Score:4, Informative)
My experience is that the less your users have to do with backups, the better - they click through error messages, they don't read EULAs, they will not take the care you will because it is not a concern they have internalized. In general, it needs to be as automatic, hands-free and brainless as possible. REMEMBER, SIMPLE == GOOD, COMPLEX == BAD! However, you also need to realize that the backups procedures are just one part of the larger picture. Simply backing up isn't good enough, you need to create a situation where they don't have to make decisions about backing up. From their perspective, they have to just remember to keep their files in X location and the backups will just happen.
Here's (roughly) what I did:
Create a folder to hold all user files on the server, say "Files". Make sure this folder gets backed up. :)
Share the folder, and create a logon script that every user runs at logon to map this share to a COMMONLY AVAILABLE drive letter, say W:.
On W: Create several top-level folders: Private (create a folder in here for each user accessible only to them) Shared (create folders here that need to be shared by groups) Apps (create folders in here to hold for application files and data used by programs) Software (for program install files) etc...
Make sure security is set up to PREVENT users from saving files where they do not belong (like the root of W:). You may want to create a user group for each folder and use membership in that group to control access to the files. They should have to come to you to create a new folder for them in most cases, that gives you the opportunity to review the request with your superiors to ensure proper Policy & Procedures are being followed.
Teach your users this mantra "PUT ALL FILES ON W:" Put it in your email sig, your memos and on your voicemail! Use it in casual conversation - I'm not kidding, REPETITION!)
Go to each PC and move their files into their W:\Private\username folder.
Delete the moved files from their hard drive.
Reset all apps (word, excel, etc.) to default open/save on the W: drive.
Your goal should be to reprogram them to think of the network drive as the only place there is to save files.
Human Intervention == Bad (Score:4, Informative)
yourself up for failure, not setting yourself up for success. People
are people, and we all forget things. Working late, bleary eyed, the
best of us can forget to "copy files to the network server for back."
Suggestions as to have users sign papers to say I know I need to back
up, and if I don't it's my fault, yada yada are bad too. That's not
solving the problem, that CYA. Lame.
Workstation backup isn't that hard. If you totally lose a drive, all
you need to restore it are the app and OS binaries, and the user's
data. The app and OS are on CD's, so those serve as backups for that,
so it's the user's data we need to focus on.
Designate a few folders to back up. E.g. where-ever email is stored,
the desktop, a user folder (if it's in windows, Documents and Settings
is a good one, as a lot of programs default things to save in there.
if it's unix, just make it the user's home directory). You don't need
to backup the entire drive. In fact, that's more than likely a waste,
except in a few cases.
Users can easily understand the should work in a specified folder or
folders underneath that folder. This doesn't require an additional
step (it's still just saving), it's a matter of where they're saving.
Are there hypothetical holes still? Sure. Do they happen in practice
that often (if ever)? Not really. If you're super paranoid (or super
diligent, depending on how you look at it), you can write a process
that looks for modified files outside the targeted back up region. If
it's a file common on a lot of machines, it's probably a standard file
(e.g. a config, preference, etc.), and you can most likely whitelist
those. Others could notify yourself (or the user) via email, and
politely ask that they move it if it is to be backed up.
Lastly, *test* *your* *setup*. This cannot be emphasized enough. You
don't need to delete a user file or anything dumb like that. Just
ask someone to name a random important file, and confirm you can
restore it to a different drive. Or pretend your production server
just crashed and you need to bring it back.
This has two key advantages: 1) obviously confirms your setup works,
2) lets you get comfortable with the restore process in a non-stressed
manner, which things going wrong is okay. You don't want to be trying
to figure it out when you're already stressed out because things have
gone horribly wrong.
Anyway, HTH.
-Bill
Great free tool: BackupPC (Score:3)
BackupPC is a set of very nice Perl scripts and modules that uses Samba to connect to your Winders machines and back up their data to a 'data pool' on the BackupPC server's hard drive. It can be configured to run the backups at night, and will run the backup during the day if it missed the nightly due to the user shutting their machine off or taking their laptop home. It also uses MD5 hashes to check for duplicate files and will make hard links instead of duplicates in order to save space on the server's drive. You can set it up to access client machines via the hidden shares, i.e. C$; there's no software to load on the clients. User data can also be compressed, or just stored on the server's drive as plain files. Makes restoring a snap, and you don't have to worry about aging tapes or corrupted backup databases.
BackupPC as far as I know only works well when the server is running on Linux, as it depends on samba, tar, Apache, etc. Setting it up is easy for someone with a Linux/Unix background, but it can be a learning process for someone new to Linux and Perl.
Did I mention it was free?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Windows has no standard home directory... (Score:4, Insightful)
More than once I've had to rescue a small business who moved their Quickbooks data into My_Documents, then their accountant worked on it and saved it back to the original location. Anyone who's worked with Quickbooks knows what a mess this is- you can't just merge the two files. It's back to square one- sometimes with weeks' worth of data!
If Microsoft and Windows developers would just standardize one one home directory, it would make everyone's lives a lot easier.
Re:Famous last words... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, SMBtar is a wonderful tool, just require them to share out important directories. You can do the same thing using a simple shell script. That is what I have done in the past. This can then be stored on tape, hdd on a major server, etc.
Re:Famous last words... (Score:2)
I completely agree, smbtar functions wondefully in our office, however:
The biggest win in securing office data in our office has been the introduction of a samba server with a RAID-ed network disk. Since introduction of this availablility, all our geologists (Hah!) have merged their data on it without questions or pointers.
The availability of secure, large network space has led to a proper self-maintaining archiving system on the network disk, leaving me only to do continuity checking on the server and doing regular backups of the server, not the workstations.
Also our colleagues now realize that when they loose data on a workstation, it is their own fault. Most of them only work local on large files, and create numerous backups before fiddling with them.
The fact they all have accepted and integrated this scheme in our network suggests to me you should not force them, merely offer them a better alternative should convince them.
Whoa (Score:2)
Damm last time i saw him he was practically swallowing a microphone mumbling something about being a human-fly
Re:paraphrase (Score:2)
hmmm (Score:2)
you may get fired for not stopping the problem before the users learn this lesson
Re:"How sad for you" (Score:2)
Not fair, but that is what will happen. You may lose your job as a result, NOT the guy who failed to back up. And there may be some justice in that as well if you think about it.
sPh
Amen (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Pull an end run (Score:2, Funny)
SimCity.