N2WS Backup & Recovery v3.0 – A big step forward

6th of March, 2020 / / No Comments

N2WS Backup & Recovery v3.0 has now gone live. Below is my review of a late beta version.

For those that have been following, you’ll know that Telstra Purple use N2WS Backup & Recovery (I’ll call it BaR from now, not as good as CPM, but I’m not going to type the whole thing). I was lucky to get a beta preview of N2WS BaR v3.0 and have been very impressed. The new UI is a massive improvement, but there are also a number of small things that have been fixed too.… [Keep reading] “N2WS Backup & Recovery v3.0 – A big step forward”

AWS Data Lifecycle Manager Update

28th of June, 2019 / / No Comments

This one slipped a bit under the radar, but the other week there was a big change for people running Date Lifecycle Manager (DLM). In my colleague Matt’s weekly AWS update on May 31st, he mentioned the “snapshot across multiple EBS volumes” update. On first glance this didn’t seem to be a big deal. Yep, you can now take multi-volume snapshots in a consistent manner. As a backup person, this is good news, but not much more than a footnote.… [Keep reading] “AWS Data Lifecycle Manager Update”

Backups in AWS

27th of March, 2019 / / No Comments

In a previous blog (HERE) I discussed why backups were needed in AWS and about RPO, RTO and other TLAs. This blog will compare some of the different backup options available for your infrastructure in AWS.

Roll your own

AWS has really good options for managing your environment your way, whether this be scripts using CLIs, other software using APIs, or Lambda scripts. Managing your backup environment is no different. Lambda scripts can look for tags on your instances or volumes and create a snapshot.… [Keep reading] “Backups in AWS”

A tale of two products (don’t expect Dickens)

30th of January, 2019 / / No Comments

At Re:Invent and just after, AWS released several new products. Included in those were AWS FSx Windows and AWS Backup. Both of these products had a lot of interest for me, for various reasons, so I thought I’d give them a try. None of my experience was under work conditions, but the following are my experiences. Note: Both are only in a small number of regions, currently.

AWS FSx Windows

Pros:

  • Easy setup (by itself)
  • Fully compatible Windows file server
  • DFS support
  • Has backups
  • Works as expected

Cons:

  • Requires AWS Microsoft AD in each VPC
  • Can’t change file share size
  • Some features can only be changed from CLI
  • Throughput can only be changed through restore
  • Minimum share size is 300GB

First out of the box, and released at Re:Invent is AWS FSx Windows.… [Keep reading] “A tale of two products (don’t expect Dickens)”

Backups? Doesn’t Amazon handle that?

20th of December, 2018 / / No Comments

For many, the cloud is a magical place where servers just appear and your cloud provider looks after everything, or, if they at least have a concept of the servers, they just assume that the provider will also back them up. Lots of people never bothered to think about protection in a VMware environment, so why start now?

Unfortunately, while your cloud provider probably supplies the tools, you still need to do the configuration and management.… [Keep reading] “Backups? Doesn’t Amazon handle that?”

Automate the nightly backup of your Development FIM/MIM Sync and Portal Servers Configuration

31st of January, 2017 / / 6 Comments

Last week in a customer development environment I had one of those oh shit moments where I thought I’d lost a couple of weeks of work. A couple of weeks of development around multiple Management Agents, MV Schema changes etc. Luckily for me I was just connecting to an older VM Image, but it got me thinking. It would be nice to have an automated process that each night would;

  • Export each Management Agent on a FIM/MIM Sync Server
  • Export the FIM/MIM Synchronisation Server Configuration
  • Take a copy of the Extensions Folder (where I keep my PowerShell Management Agents scripts)
  • Export the FIM/MIM Service Server Configuration

And that is what this post covers.… [Keep reading] “Automate the nightly backup of your Development FIM/MIM Sync and Portal Servers Configuration”

Leveraging Cloud Storage for the Enterprise: Microsoft StorSimple – Part 1

23rd of October, 2015 / / No Comments

Originally posted on Bobbie’s blog @ www.thecloudguy.info

It’s no secret that one of the biggest pain points for enterprises today is the rapid growth of unstructured data. The ability to manage, protect and archive an organisation’s most valuable assets is arguably one of the biggest strains on IT department budgets.

The advent of cloud technology has many organisations looking for a way to leverage Pay-as-You-Go cloud storage offerings to assist in the data life-cycle process. The difficulty with these offerings is that data is stored as objects rather than on file systems such as NFS and CIFS, meaning integration with existing business processes and solutions isn’t straight forward.… [Keep reading] “Leveraging Cloud Storage for the Enterprise: Microsoft StorSimple – Part 1”