Adv Workstation Central Backup Plans. 1 per workstation or 1 for multiple workstations?
I've got 6 computers that I really care about. I've purchased Adv Workstation with Dedup & Universal Restore. I'm slowly setting everything up. I have an un-backed-up 2008 Server running the admin server(node) with a local dedup folder and a Synology NAS as the backup location. I'm replacing a WHS that just died on me, so happy with 1 backup a day. Universal restore may be overkill, but the WHS could restore to a bigger HD. WHS also handled dedup (I believe) and was nice to pin backups for a major pre-install.
I think the G-F-S backups are just the ticket to allow me to recover a file from a blunder and/or go back to a point-in-time. And worst-case whole new HD/or computer.
I've set up a single computer so far with a single plan.
My question is, should I set up a single plan and point it to all my computers? or should I set up 6 plans, one for each computer?
My eventual plan is to have the Synology folder copied to a cloud location. However, I'm wrangling a bit regarding the ultimate size of all that, and the de-dup db wouldn't necessarily be included. So I'm guessing I'll need to set up just the Grandfather (full) backups to put a single copy in a secondary location. Which if I understand correctly will be un-de-duped (?), but would ultimately allow me to use the backups.. assuming they made it all to the cloud before the meteor hit... or would a cloud scenario be better served as a separate plan?
Thank you for your quick response.
I added 3 more computers to my G-F-S plan that had been working for a couple of days for a single computer. After 6 hours it failed de-duplicating on the 2nd box and the 3rd & 4th couldn't connect to the storage node, which had acronis using 10GB of 12GB total ram. It looks like I have to restart the whole job again vs. trying one of the other computers. So it may be that setting up a plan per computer may be better? as I could retry a single computer of my choice vs the one that may be having issues? I'll try the whole plan again just to see. My storage node is a dual Xeon 2.53GHz with 12GB of ram and 1TB raid-5 array running Windows Server R2 standard. Currently Acronis is the only thing its doing. I may need to set up dedup on node only too, may try that if fails again before splitting plans.
I didn't consider the issue with the vault, and I'm assuming the replicated copy is similar format so while un-de-duped it could be accessed at anytime the Storage node is active.
You can run any plan manually on a single machine if you connect to the machine directly. The centralized plan will be in the list - you can run it but not delete or modify.