Home Forums Discussions Problems Off site back up

Anyone having problems with off site backup? my in situ and external hard drive backup went fine, but I tried twice to do the offsite backup tonight and it froze in the uploading information and couldn't finish/start back up off site so I rebooted the computer--and same thing happened again, so I gave up, but just wondering if anyone else had a problem. thanks--jimmie

I'm not sure what's going on with offsite these days myself, but for the last month or two, I haven't been able to get a secure link to AC's offsite backup, so while my local back ups work fine, I keep getting a failed message on back up for the third portion.

Shankar
Family Med, NJ

Shankar,
I would strongly urge you to get in touch with AC support. An occasional failed back-up is one thing; a month or two is another story. To say nothing of the fact that you are paying for this service!

The off site backup worked just fine tonight--so I am not sure what I did or did not do last night, but working now--jimmie

This is why I do not like AC's offsite backup. Many of you may not recall, but there was a time you could access the offsite backup yourself. Now you have to call. That's crazy. Imagine all of the commercial ones like Crash Plan or Mozy or Jungle Disk telling you that you pay for the storage, and we will manage it. If your computer crashes, just call us.

I say this, because you may be getting an error message but there may be no problem. It's ironic. When we could get them ourselves, no message. Now that we can't, there is. I guess it's nice to have the message.

Two months, though.

I am a relative newcomer to AC and not quite as computer savy as some of you.
Can anybody tell me if some of the other off site back ups such as Carbonite are good and HIPAA compliant?
thanks
Bala

Bala,
I don't know the answer to your question, but have only been doing AC since Nov 2011, but back up every night through the admin section on AC, with my external hard drive on F, in situ and off site with one step and an external hard drive backing up entire computer as well. I take the two externals home every night, but have only had the one problem with the offsite the other night, so far has worked well otherwise--jbl

thanks for the info.
I do use a external hard drive as well, but I am not sure how you backup to 2 separate hard drives at the same time.
As far as off site back up, I have been reading that many users of AC are having problems with AC backup due to slow speeds on upload.
That is why I asked the question .
Bala.

Bala,
I don't backup two external hard drives at the same time, the first external drive I backup with the in situ, and off site as my first backup, then I back up my entire computer on another external hard drive and both processes take about 5 minutes each. I just like to see and do the back up myself, and take both external drives home each night in case of break in or fire at the office--jimmie

Of course I have to put my own two cents worth when it comes to backups. But, while I am not big on taking hard drives home, I would alternate so there is one still in the office. Things can happen to hard drives in transit and hard drive can fail rather easily.

Bala you are talking a lot about off site backups. Those should be thought of as complementary and not major. Hopefully, I can slip this in past a bunch of people, but I don't even do offsite backups to Jungle Disk or Rsync, etc. Rsync is the most likely to give you VSS and HIPAA compliance, but as far as HIPAA you have to read each site carefully. Personally, I don't care about HIPAA.

@jimmi How much data do you have on your computer? Even with incremental, SIS or dedupe, five minutes is awfully fast for a full backup or incremental. My backup takes almost three hours.

Bert,

I'll double check tomorrow, because I don't recall and will let you know. I just started the AC first week of November 2011 and have only been selectively scanning in items, as I am keeping the paper chart for 7 years and didn't think I needed to scan in every item into my current PC funtioning as my SQL, and soon to get a mirrored server functioning as a desk top. jimmie

But, backing up the OS should take at least 45 minutes. Backing up databases quite a while too. Plus, there must be programs on the computer?

Bert,
Haven't forgotten about you but wanted to time my backups. I use a seagate goflex 1 terabyte external drive when I do my backup through the admin section on AC, when I do the in situ and offsite backup at the same time. This backup took just over 9 minutes, and I have 803 current and 813 active patients with 288 mb of memory.

When backing up my computer I use a click free automatic backup external drive with 640 gb. This backup took just over 4 minutes. I have 70,838 files and 245 files with a total of 4526.7 mb data backed up.

I have windows XP-- so I hope this helps. jimmie

Wow! A TB drive is pretty big for AC backups. So, for the purpose of this discussion, can we just talk about the computer backup? Thanks.

From what I am reading, you are backing up 4.5GB of data to an external drive in four minutes. Can you answer a few questions?

First, is the external drive connected with USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 or are you using eSATA and, if so, what speed?

Second are you doing a:

Full backup
Differential
Incremental
Single Instance Store
Deduplication

I am also confused by the 70,838 files and 245 files? Which is it?

Thanks. I am just curious.

"70,838 files and 245 folders" I'm guessing since that's how Windows outputs them.

4.5GB in 4 minutes is certainly possible on USB 2, 3, or eSATA.

4.5E3 MB / 30 MB/s (USB 2 Average) = 150 seconds
4.5E3 MB / 80 MB/s (Hard Drive Average, eSATA and USB3 have more than enough bandwith) = 56.25 seconds

I should have guessed the 245 folders. But, are you surmising that the entire computer including the OS is 4.5 gig?

The Seagate Go Flex is a portable hard drive with USB 3.0. Portable hard drives may be slower however.

Of course not. The average Windows 7 installation is at least 10 gigabytes. Probably just documents.

Unless he's got some new super compression algorithm, in that case, I want to invest lol.

Yeah, Home Premium is usually 10 to 15 GB for 32-bit and double that for 64-bit. Even USB 3.0 can't do that.

Yes, jimmie has an SCA. He will be rich. But, he will use Kind Capatalism. Just joking around jimmie.

But, I do recommend backing up the entire computer every night over and above the modular backups. Or have a separate hard drive or partition just for data including the databases with VSS.

Great suggestions above. Full image backups will allow a rapid restore with minimal downtime. That's the one of the major reasons the virtualization sector has flourished. You can take snapshots and restore almost instantaneously.

Thanks Jon. Actually we realized what the issue was. We hit the magic number of 20 gb on the full back up file, which apparently is the cap. So now we're backing up without the imported items and the back up is going through. But now I have to do a separate back up locally of the full database with the imported items too.


Shankar
Family Med
NJ

1. Why can't you just back up the imported items folder.
2. I still don't know why anyone would back up II offsite. They are just too big. How long did that back up take.
3. I don't think the AC offsite backup should even allow IIs to be backed up.

Bert and Sandeep,

I meant to say 245 folders not files--sorry.
I had to spend about an hour or so on the phone with my brother in law (IT interpreter guy for me) just so I could figure out Bert's questions above. I believe it is a 2.0 USB and it is a full backup (I believe) with windows and I am not using eSATA just a super compression algorithm (by banging on my external drive to coax it along from time to time).
This idea of rapid restore with VSS is all new to me and do you guys have a resource to learn more about this and is it affordable for a poor internist in the boondocks of Montana. jimmie

VSS or Volume Shadow Copy Services has been around since XP. Basically, it takes snapshots of your OS and key applications. There are two major benefits to VSS.

First, it allows you to do a back up of programs that are in use such as SQL Server or Exchange. A backup without VSS or other snapshow technology cannot properly back up open or used files so you may not get a good backup of SQL, etc. A requester (your backup software) will ask VSS to make a full copy of your entire OS. VSS then asks its writers to make xml files of the data. When they are ready, they tell Volume Shadow Copy Service, and they are then told to write the data. This is too detailed. Basically VSS just takes a shapshot. Users can still read SQL or Exchange, but writes are frozen by VSS. Once the copy is made (a complete mirror of the computer), the mirror is broken and the copy is backed up. Just for fun bring up a command prompt and type >vssadmin list writers to see all of your VSS writers and if they are working properly. For more fun, type >vssadmin list providers, and it will show you the Microsoft VSS.

The other very nice benefit is that any shared folder on a volume where VSS is enabled benefits from up to 64 previous versions. These are exact versions at a point in time. I find this to be the most under utilized and unknown part of Windows. While you may have all sorts of backups, if you were to completely delete your AC databases, you could right click on that folder and select the latest version and restore it. You can also open it. You set the schedule. Ours is set at four hours.

There are many backup programs which use VSS. It is key in making a good backup. This is one of the things to look for in offsite backups such as Mozy or Jungle Disk: Can they or do they use Microsoft's built-in VSS. Programs such as Backup Assist uses VSS and allows for a program called Open Files which works similarly.

VSS also allows for system restores.

A fun $259 story with me and Microsoft occurred when I downloaded Acronis (used to be great, but now not so much), and it used its own VSS and writers. The only problem is (and this is on their site -- they even host their own forums in trying to help you fix it) is once deleted, they leave their VSS apps behind. This is clearly seen when you type vssadmin list providers and you see Microsoft and Acronis. Therefore, any new backup software that uses VSS like Backup Assist cannot run if you try to use VSS. Microsoft was able to remove the writers in a couple of hours with a series of maneuvers and registry editing.

Oh, and after the fun with the vssadmin list writers, etc., you can right click on any shared folders and see if you have previous versions. If not, you should enable this. It really takes little system resources.

Just thought I would include the summary of my Backup Assist backup of the server. I think just seeing the "Snapshot Manager" sort of makes it real. You can also look at my time of backup and see why I am jealous.

I am using SATAII, of course III is out now, but it should out perform 2.0 rather easily. Of course, SATA III even at 6Gb/s technically should be outperformed by USB 3.0.

Now, if they can just get USB connections to connect in either direction.

The 110 does get compressed to 65. Of course, if you are using dedupe or SIS, it would be MUCH smaller, but it wouldn't be a full backup, although on your backup drive, it would appear to be two backups. Very cool technology.

Just remember SATA I, SATA II, SATA III, and USB 3.0 all have sufficient bandwith to max out a hard drive.

Unless you're backing up using SSDs, it shouldn't matter.

Jimmie,

Good conversation last night...

Yeah, you are most likely using USB 2.0. Version 3.0 has not been built into new computers until sometime in 2011. Unless you buy a 3.0 "solution" which includes a PCI or PCIe card that you install into your pc.

Yes, you can do a rapid restore with VSS - if everything is setup correctly and you know how to use it. This is a lot of technology to throw on you guys, and you still have to keep up with the medical field in your spare time. (And the really fun new laws!)

I'm a corporate storage guy. Our solutions tend to be expensive. They start in the $100K + range and go up. But we, just like you, have to figure out what you are trying to protect against and how much you are willing to pay for it.

What are you trying to protect against? Backups protect against "small" disasters. If you mistakenly delete a file, if your pc's hard drive fails, if you get a virus and it corrupts your system - that's what backups protect against.

I think your office, like most small group offices (not hospitals) need to first ask yourself, what can you live without and how long can you live without it. You can backup to a locally attached USB disk and that is just fine. It gives you that level of protection against the small disasters.

If your office has a fire, or you have a break in and the thieves cart off your equipment - then what do you do? That is the situation where you need offsite backup and recovery. Do you need everything that was on that pc or not? But, having offsite backups will allow you to recover fairly easily and fairly quickly. Otherwise, you buy your replacement system, re-create your user accounts, re-install all your software, re-install AmazingCharts, then download your AmazingCharts offsite backup to recover. Of course, you have lost all the rest of your customization - all your MS Word templates, your DragonSpeak voice profile, etc.

How much are you willing to spend, versus how much downtime can you afford when you try to recover? And do the new ACA rules let you get by on manual methods during a disaster?

Bryan

Bryan,

Thanks for your input--I have to make a disclaimer, Bryan is my brother in law, who without his wisdom and insight, I would have never ventured into this arena. I was all for taking the penalties and continuing in the paper realm mainly because of my fear of the unknown. This whole venture of jumping into the electronic realm, is in essence like learning a vast new language/way of being. And thanks to Sandeep and Bert who while carrying on their practices have also honed their skills in this area as well. I think some of this information dissemination is starting to sink in a bit, but I sure appreciate the technological acumen you all have acquired and shared. jimmie

Bert is the real hero. I'm not a physician ha. Just the son of one.

With those offsite backup services try to chose those that can ship a hard drive with your data to you ASAP in case of an emergency. Restoring over the Internet could take a while for large amounts of data. It's just really nice to have that option. Some even have offsite incremental image backup. Some have SQL backup. Obviously the more features you get, the more expensive the service gets.

Just make a list of requirements for your service and find the backup service that best suits you. Some big ones for me are no bandwith caps, large/unlimited capacity, shipping the drive in case of disaster... I currently have Carbonite (subscription ends in 2 months). My offsite backup has fallen weeks behind not due to my bandwith limitations, but Carbonite placing bandwith caps on my account.

Bert has suggested iBackup. I like iBackup, but the price is pretty high for the amount of storage I need (500gb = 500/year). Compared to Amazing Charts Offsite Backup which is 250/year, it's not bad at all considering it backs up everything including SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint. (Pretty much designed for SBS). It meets each and every one of my requirements, but it is pricey. However, it appears their rapid serve option, which allows you to seed or restore back up in case of emergency, is free. Makes it very appealing. Other services charges 150+ to seed or restore your backup. This makes it even more appealing to me. Although pricey, this seems like the best option for me. Especially since I will definitely be seeding my initial backup rather than spending a month or two uploading data to the iBackup.

I'd recommend crash plan as the affordable service for simple backups. Their application is much nicer than carbonite's in my opinion. Service also seems better as well. There are many others out there Jungle Disk, Mozy, etc.

Also, check the service's reputation. After further research, at the moment, I will have to withdraw my recommendation for now since I found these complaints:
http://www.onlinebackupsreview.com/ibackup.php (towards the bottom)

There are also many positive reviews: www.top-10-online-backup.com/ibackup-review.

Looks like a good service as long as you leave yourself some wiggle room.

Sandeep,

Sorry to have mistakenly identified you as a physician--I made an assumption. My apologies, and once again I do appreciate all your insight. I am the son of a high school teacher, so please don't hold that against me. Thanks for the advice. Jimmie.

The actual best way to go is to use the open source backup programs such as Rsync or R3sync. These are the fastest and most accurate and can use dedupe, incrementals, differentials, etc. Remember, with incremental or diff or dedupe, the time really doesn't change much. The backup program still has to go through every file to see if the file has changed Now the bandwidth changes as only the changed data is moved over the Internet. This can be done server side or destination side. Dedupe works generally at the block level and can back up just small sections of a single file. It works by having hard pointers point at the pieces of backup it needs. When you look at your destinataion backup (good luck if it is encrypted) you will still see two backups only you will only see a small increase in size.

Single Instance Store is very similar. Dedupe can do the same thing. Let's say you have a big practice with 100 users (helps with eight users as well). If they all received an email with an attachment, you would have 100 10MB attachachments. SIS will backup only one and restore 100.

Rsync has EXCELLENT support. You do have to pay for the space you use. When you call Rsync, you do not get Level 1 OR Level 2, you get the actual engineers. When you talk to them, be ready, as they will have your answer immediately, and do not use scripts. They can set up your backup for you. I suggest going with a combination of Backup Assist which allows you to back up locally (with Backup Assist -- the best in the business (incredible) and Rsync. Also, with Rsync and Backup Assist you can use Volume Shadow Copy Server WHICH ALLOWS YOU TO BACK UP SQL DATABASES WITH OPEN FILES OR LOCKED FILES. You have to be careful as CrashPlan will tell you it can, but reading on will tell you that you need a 3rd party to back them up first and then they back up the database. Not good since you have two points of failure and the whole reason you are backing up is to back up AC on SQL. You can write a script or batch file which will time turning off SQL Service before you back up. There are also backup programs, again like Backup Assist, that allows a product known as Open Files backup which backs up open files.

Now this sounds crazy, but I like sending encrypted but storing unencrypted so I can see my data.

One thing you may want to do is narrow your choices, then call support for each. For instance, I just called CrashPlan and had a tech on the phone in less than 30 seconds. That's damned good.

Another thing you can do with Rsync (and possibly other backup programs -- but doubful) is to make your own online server. You simply would use a computer (or NAS or something like Drobo) and backup over the net to that destination. For me, this is the best of both worlds. Seeding is easy and retrieving whole backups are as easy as driving home.

If you use Rsync (which you can use by yourself), while it is not that difficult to set up, I would recommend allowing Rsync to set up your backup. Using Backup Assist, which Leslie and Adam can tell you is bullet proof or at least arrow proof, not only makes Rsync much easier, but it allows you to do local backups, and I would challenge you to find a program that 1) allows more types of backups and 2) destination media. It is simply the best backup program for the money and even not for the money out there.

I still have yet to figure out how SiS, Deduplication, incremental or whatever backup can back up only parts of SQL Server. I don't see how you can back it up on Friday, add one note on Sunday and have it only back up that one note the next day.

Finally, you are much better off backing up the entire instance than just the user databases in the folder. Backup Assist has an add-on where you can back up the entire instance in less than ten minutes and this includes backing up every five minutes. You can back this up to an external drive or back it up to your server and back that up offline. Backing up AC in less than two seconds a database every 15 minutes is rather cool. And, there is almost no risk of getting corrupted or missing data using the proper backup software. Below is a link to several SQL and server/computer backup software. I can't vouch for them, but here they are.

http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download/incremental-backup-sql-server-4612490.html

Truth be known, I don't even back up online anymore other than using AC.

Bert,
I agree with Sandeep you da man!!!! jimmie--thanks

Thanks. I try. LOL

Gotta promise me your brother-in-law won't read it. He'll rip it apart.

His brother-in-law is probably using SANs with fiber channels. We're just little specs compared to that lol. Those aren't cheap. Even those fiber cables are very expensive.

Backing up at home is a good idea. But I want my backup in a different state ha. The house is right across the street from the office.

Onsite Backup (AC Backup/Backup Assist/Windows Backup)
Offsite Local Backup (Rsync/SFTP over SSH)
Offsite Remote Backup (Crashplan, Mozy, etc.)

That's as good as you can get without breaking the bank. If you need large capacity, consider building your own NAS with FreeNAS. Due to the nature of ZFS file system compared to the normal NTFS (Windows), it actually works better without a RAID Card (FreeNas uses RAIDZ). (You will need more RAM though for the cache, 1GB for each TB) Not having to pay for a RAID Card or the OS. That's a huge saving. Then again that's for a large capacity NAS.

Bert... too late...

I basically agree with you. A large IT shop has personnel (like me) to handle their storage and backups. But for individuals and small groups you need to figure out what you can afford.

You can get the open source solutions often bundled in with small NAS (Network Attached Storage) hardware. Take a look at the solutions by Synology, Thecus, Iomega and others. You can use rsync to sync from one system in your office to a remote system. Or from your office pc to the remote NAS system. And, most importantly, the rsync can be encrypted (HIPAA.)

The Small Net Builder web site has some good reviews and recommendations for various SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) NAS solutions.
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-reviews

Single instance store and dedupe will get you a lot more storage for your dollar. This means you can take more backups and/or keep them longer. SIS is a good start. Drobo seems to be a fairly decent home or small office solution. http://www.drobo.com/
Drobo seems to be liked by quite a few people in the field.

Dedupe tends to be much more expensive. At least for boxed solutions. However, there are FreeNAS solutions that use ZFS (Zettabyte File System) on their backend disk. This has dedupe built in. iXsystems is one vendor that supplies a small 4 disk NAS storage solution using ZFS/dedupe. Never used it, but it would be worth checking out.

A new vendor that seems to be offering a very interesting solution is Revinetix. They have a full-blown backup solution with dedupe in an appliance format. I have no idea what the pricing would be.

As for backing up SQL Server, yes, that's a problem. Even using the built-in VSS does not guarantee you a good backup. The most basic safe way is to shutdown the database, then back it up. Or use the application's tools to run a local backup to disk, then back that up to your destination backup device. Otherwise, you need a backup "agent" of some sort that integrates the backup software with SQL server.

Still, get as much a solution out of the box as you can. You aren't making revenue by doing your own IT. You have to figure out the cost/benefit ratio to yourself.

Yeah that. LOL

@Sandeep, that is basically what I have down to the detail except Rsync to Amazon S3.

Buffaloes are nice. I have two RAID5 four TB in the basement about 100 feet from the server and about six feet off the ground in a rack. Sure, we are on the river, but it's rather steep and by the time it flooded the basement, I think I would know. And by the time the first started upstairs the NASs in the basement would probably be fine. Especially given two.