WHS question

[coolVariable]

how does the client software work?
Can you set it up so it backs up the client whenever it is idle?

I am asking since I am thinking about getting WHS but I only have laptops.
As laptops, they get turned off over night and I certainly do not want them to wake on a schedule to try to back up.
Ideally, they starting backing up when they are on the home LAN and idle.
Does it work like that?

(If I have to run the backup manually, then I might as well forget about WHS and simply go with Vista backup and a NAS.)

 

[bsobel]

They do get set to wake on a timer to backup, but you can make that wake time during the day if it makes more sense for you...

 

[PhreePhly]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
how does the client software work?
Can you set it up so it backs up the client whenever it is idle?

I am asking since I am thinking about getting WHS but I only have laptops.
As laptops, they get turned off over night and I certainly do not want them to wake on a schedule to try to back up.
Ideally, they starting backing up when they are on the home LAN and idle.
Does it work like that?

(If I have to run the backup manually, then I might as well forget about WHS and simply go with Vista backup and a NAS.)

I have the same setup at home, I have 3 laptops and a desktop. The backup is scheduled for between 1200 and 0400. The client is set to wake any laptops. My laptop is set for hybrid sleep, and even if I am in the hibernate mode, it wakes up and backs up. The laptops are all setup wireless so it happens no matter where I've place the laptop in the house.

It's pretty slick.

PhreePhly

 

[Jeff7181]

When I was using WHS, one of the things I liked was that when a computer wakes to back up, it doesn't have to sit idle and "time out" before it goes back to sleep. When the backup is complete, it goes back to sleep immediately.

 

[PhreePhly]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
When I was using WHS, one of the things I liked was that when a computer wakes to back up, it doesn't have to sit idle and "time out" before it goes back to sleep. When the backup is complete, it goes back to sleep immediately.

Really? Cool, I never noticed that. I am always asleep during the backups.

PhreePhly

 

[coolVariable]

So there is no way to set the laptop to backup when it's idle.
That's bad. I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.
that is a major design flaw in my opinion.

 

[PhreePhly]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
So there is no way to set the laptop to backup when it's idle.
That's bad. I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.
that is a major design flaw in my opinion.

WHS backup is typically scheduled to occur during a time range. Mine is set for 1200 to 0400, however you can set any time period you want. I guess you could set it to have a schedule over a 24 hour period.

PhreePhly

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.

Because of my work, I can be working virtually any time of the day. I've set my WHS backups to run at the time I'm least likely to be doing "heavy-duty" work, from 4:00 am to 7:00 am. I have five PCs being backed up, but not all of them are "on" each day.

Once the original backup is completed (the first or second day after WHS is installed), a "typical" backup of my 200 GB hard drive takes 17 minutes. Last night's backup took twelve minutes.

If you are super-busy and the slowdown of your PC is distracting you, you can click "Cancel the Backup" and re-start it at any time. It only takes three seconds and two mouse-clicks.

It's hardly a "major" design flaw. For a "major" flaw, take a look at Mozy's online backups, where you can only schedule the START time, and there's no way to set a STOP time. That's a real pain, because if you run other software (like NTBackup) that creates Volume Shadow Copies, the two can conflict and can make a major mess. I much prefer being able to set hard Start and Stop times, so I know exactly what my backups are doing.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.

Because of my work, I can be working virtually any time of the day. I've set my WHS backups to run at the time I'm least likely to be doing "heavy-duty" work, from 4:00 am to 7:00 am. I have five PCs being backed up, but not all of them are "on" each day.

Once the original backup is completed (the first or second day after WHS is installed), a "typical" backup of my 200 GB hard drive takes 17 minutes. Last night's backup took twelve minutes.

If you are super-busy and the slowdown of your PC is distracting you, you can click "Cancel the Backup" and re-start it at any time. It only takes three seconds and two mouse-clicks.

It's hardly a "major" design flaw. For a "major" flaw, take a look at Mozy's online backups, where you can only schedule the START time, and there's no way to set a STOP time. That's a real pain, because if you run other software (like NTBackup) that creates Volume Shadow Copies, the two can conflict and can make a major mess. I much prefer being able to set hard Start and Stop times, so I know exactly what my backups are doing.

I am sorry, I still consider this a major design flaw, since WHS (at least IMO) is supposed to work with laptops.
I DON'T want my laptop to wake and do a backup at a predetermined time! I want it to recognize when it is on the same LAN as the WHS and only then it should start a backup when the pc is idle for a configurable time (e.g. 5 minutes) ... if I come before it is done, then it should stop.
THAT would be a smart and logical setup for laptops!
Tss, tss, tss. I guess no WHS for me.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I am sorry, I still consider this a major design flaw, since WHS (at least IMO) is supposed to work with laptops.
I DON'T want my laptop to wake and do a backup at a predetermined time! I want it to recognize when it is on the same LAN as the WHS and only then it should start a backup when the pc is idle for a configurable time (e.g. 5 minutes) ... if I come before it is done, then it should stop.
THAT would be a smart and logical setup for laptops!
Tss, tss, tss. I guess no WHS for me.

I think this is a bit silly, but nonetheless, we aim to please around here. Did you google? I did and found this:
http://www.mediasmartserver.ne...r_Shared_Folder_Backup

So, that says you can kick off the backup via .exe, so then it's just a question of scheduling, forcing, or creating a way to do a backup during idle times.

 

[heymrdj]

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.

Because of my work, I can be working virtually any time of the day. I've set my WHS backups to run at the time I'm least likely to be doing "heavy-duty" work, from 4:00 am to 7:00 am. I have five PCs being backed up, but not all of them are "on" each day.

Once the original backup is completed (the first or second day after WHS is installed), a "typical" backup of my 200 GB hard drive takes 17 minutes. Last night's backup took twelve minutes.

If you are super-busy and the slowdown of your PC is distracting you, you can click "Cancel the Backup" and re-start it at any time. It only takes three seconds and two mouse-clicks.

It's hardly a "major" design flaw. For a "major" flaw, take a look at Mozy's online backups, where you can only schedule the START time, and there's no way to set a STOP time. That's a real pain, because if you run other software (like NTBackup) that creates Volume Shadow Copies, the two can conflict and can make a major mess. I much prefer being able to set hard Start and Stop times, so I know exactly what my backups are doing.

I am sorry, I still consider this a major design flaw, since WHS (at least IMO) is supposed to work with laptops.
I DON'T want my laptop to wake and do a backup at a predetermined time! I want it to recognize when it is on the same LAN as the WHS and only then it should start a backup when the pc is idle for a configurable time (e.g. 5 minutes) ... if I come before it is done, then it should stop.
THAT would be a smart and logical setup for laptops!
Tss, tss, tss. I guess no WHS for me.

You have a shitty rant. Tell me this. Why do you let your laptop sleep. It is wasting time. You are wasting time. When you're not on your laptop, if it's Vista, it should be precaching and superfetching for the next day. If it's XP it should be defragging. It should make it's backup when you're not using it at night, when no files will change. When my laptop backs up at night it normally takes all of 10 minutes for it to update the backups of both my 320GB main drive and it's 160GB secondary. Of course I've seen it as much as an hour because I changed many GB's of data that day and it was over wireless (i never have it plugged in on the WHS's LAN, it's plugged into the academic network instead and the WHS server is on my wireless network). Microsoft built it right. You sir are the one that wants to engineer a flaw. Maybe you like this backup that you can shut on and off like a light bulb, but this kind of backing up results in a higher failure rate and a much more likely chance of an incomplete backup when you have to go running back to it. I have not had a single backup system yet that is more effective than WHS. WHS's backup in one go is even as good as having a file structure and hard drive image backup at the same time. You can restore individual files, or entire hard drives boot loader and all. I would check *your* engineering skills before you call MS's on theirs.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
That's bad. I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.

Backing up laptops is always tougher than desktops, since, by definition, they are frequently absent. I don't know of ANY backup systems that do IMAGE backups that will initiate automatically when connected, and start and pause as the User goes away and comes back.

Also, Windows Home Server can only do an image backup of a single PC at a time. Allowing multiple PCs on a network to simultaneously, start and pause their backups every time the User gets up to use the bathroom, would likely be messy.

Making reliable backups is the ONE thing that WHS must do. It works really well right now. I'll put up with having to perform two mouse-clicks to initiate a manual backup of a roving laptop.

 

[Jeff7181]

That's because it's ridiculous, RebateMonger. The reason WHS doesn't work that way is because it's a crap way to back up anything.

coolVariable, if you actually need that kind of real-time backup and redundancy you should look into keeping your data on a SAN or NAS with "previous versions" support, not a laptop and a WHS.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: heymrdj

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.

Because of my work, I can be working virtually any time of the day. I've set my WHS backups to run at the time I'm least likely to be doing "heavy-duty" work, from 4:00 am to 7:00 am. I have five PCs being backed up, but not all of them are "on" each day.

Once the original backup is completed (the first or second day after WHS is installed), a "typical" backup of my 200 GB hard drive takes 17 minutes. Last night's backup took twelve minutes.

If you are super-busy and the slowdown of your PC is distracting you, you can click "Cancel the Backup" and re-start it at any time. It only takes three seconds and two mouse-clicks.

It's hardly a "major" design flaw. For a "major" flaw, take a look at Mozy's online backups, where you can only schedule the START time, and there's no way to set a STOP time. That's a real pain, because if you run other software (like NTBackup) that creates Volume Shadow Copies, the two can conflict and can make a major mess. I much prefer being able to set hard Start and Stop times, so I know exactly what my backups are doing.

I am sorry, I still consider this a major design flaw, since WHS (at least IMO) is supposed to work with laptops.
I DON'T want my laptop to wake and do a backup at a predetermined time! I want it to recognize when it is on the same LAN as the WHS and only then it should start a backup when the pc is idle for a configurable time (e.g. 5 minutes) ... if I come before it is done, then it should stop.
THAT would be a smart and logical setup for laptops!
Tss, tss, tss. I guess no WHS for me.

You have a shitty rant. Tell me this. Why do you let your laptop sleep. It is wasting time. You are wasting time. When you're not on your laptop, if it's Vista, it should be precaching and superfetching for the next day. If it's XP it should be defragging. It should make it's backup when you're not using it at night, when no files will change. When my laptop backs up at night it normally takes all of 10 minutes for it to update the backups of both my 320GB main drive and it's 160GB secondary. Of course I've seen it as much as an hour because I changed many GB's of data that day and it was over wireless (i never have it plugged in on the WHS's LAN, it's plugged into the academic network instead and the WHS server is on my wireless network). Microsoft built it right. You sir are the one that wants to engineer a flaw. Maybe you like this backup that you can shut on and off like a light bulb, but this kind of backing up results in a higher failure rate and a much more likely chance of an incomplete backup when you have to go running back to it. I have not had a single backup system yet that is more effective than WHS. WHS's backup in one go is even as good as having a file structure and hard drive image backup at the same time. You can restore individual files, or entire hard drives boot loader and all. I would check *your* engineering skills before you call MS's on theirs.

Well, for someone that is such a great engineer you don't seem to know much about laptops.
They have batteries. Often they are not connected to AC.
Are you really such a great engineer that you think it's a smart idea to waste battery for a scheduled backup.
And here is a NEWSFLASH: we are talking about laptops => they are designed to be movable and might not be connected to the LAN of the WHS 90% of the time.
WOW! Didn't think about that, did you.
So, essentially WHS doesn't offer anything above and beyond what a NAS and Vista backup provide. At 10% of the cost.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
Are you really such a great engineer that you think it's a smart idea to waste battery for a scheduled backup.

It doesn't wake when it's on battery mode. It has to be on AC power before it will wake.

And for a multitude of reasons, you can't pause a backup once it's started, only cancel it. Doing image based backups that you can pause would introduce data consistency issues.

 

[heymrdj]

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: heymrdj

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: RebateMonger

Originally posted by: coolVariable
I want to put the WHS in a place where I am at unpredictable times and I cannot set the backup on a schedule.

Because of my work, I can be working virtually any time of the day. I've set my WHS backups to run at the time I'm least likely to be doing "heavy-duty" work, from 4:00 am to 7:00 am. I have five PCs being backed up, but not all of them are "on" each day.

Once the original backup is completed (the first or second day after WHS is installed), a "typical" backup of my 200 GB hard drive takes 17 minutes. Last night's backup took twelve minutes.

If you are super-busy and the slowdown of your PC is distracting you, you can click "Cancel the Backup" and re-start it at any time. It only takes three seconds and two mouse-clicks.

It's hardly a "major" design flaw. For a "major" flaw, take a look at Mozy's online backups, where you can only schedule the START time, and there's no way to set a STOP time. That's a real pain, because if you run other software (like NTBackup) that creates Volume Shadow Copies, the two can conflict and can make a major mess. I much prefer being able to set hard Start and Stop times, so I know exactly what my backups are doing.

I am sorry, I still consider this a major design flaw, since WHS (at least IMO) is supposed to work with laptops.
I DON'T want my laptop to wake and do a backup at a predetermined time! I want it to recognize when it is on the same LAN as the WHS and only then it should start a backup when the pc is idle for a configurable time (e.g. 5 minutes) ... if I come before it is done, then it should stop.
THAT would be a smart and logical setup for laptops!
Tss, tss, tss. I guess no WHS for me.

You have a shitty rant. Tell me this. Why do you let your laptop sleep. It is wasting time. You are wasting time. When you're not on your laptop, if it's Vista, it should be precaching and superfetching for the next day. If it's XP it should be defragging. It should make it's backup when you're not using it at night, when no files will change. When my laptop backs up at night it normally takes all of 10 minutes for it to update the backups of both my 320GB main drive and it's 160GB secondary. Of course I've seen it as much as an hour because I changed many GB's of data that day and it was over wireless (i never have it plugged in on the WHS's LAN, it's plugged into the academic network instead and the WHS server is on my wireless network). Microsoft built it right. You sir are the one that wants to engineer a flaw. Maybe you like this backup that you can shut on and off like a light bulb, but this kind of backing up results in a higher failure rate and a much more likely chance of an incomplete backup when you have to go running back to it. I have not had a single backup system yet that is more effective than WHS. WHS's backup in one go is even as good as having a file structure and hard drive image backup at the same time. You can restore individual files, or entire hard drives boot loader and all. I would check *your* engineering skills before you call MS's on theirs.

Well, for someone that is such a great engineer you don't seem to know much about laptops.
They have batteries. Often they are not connected to AC.
Are you really such a great engineer that you think it's a smart idea to waste battery for a scheduled backup.
And here is a NEWSFLASH: we are talking about laptops => they are designed to be movable and might not be connected to the LAN of the WHS 90% of the time.
WOW! Didn't think about that, did you.
So, essentially WHS doesn't offer anything above and beyond what a NAS and Vista backup provide. At 10% of the cost.

As Virge said, it won't work on battery mode. If it's not on the LAN nothing happens. WOW didn't think of that did you!

NEWSFLASH!!: All that I typed is for a network of...get this..get it now i know it's hard... 4 laptops! 4 always on the move academic laptops, 3 Vista and a XP. OMG THE AMAZING!!!111!1

Again, you need engineering skills.

 

[sxr7171]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
how does the client software work?
Can you set it up so it backs up the client whenever it is idle?

I am asking since I am thinking about getting WHS but I only have laptops.
As laptops, they get turned off over night and I certainly do not want them to wake on a schedule to try to back up.
Ideally, they starting backing up when they are on the home LAN and idle.
Does it work like that?

(If I have to run the backup manually, then I might as well forget about WHS and simply go with Vista backup and a NAS.)

Have the backup scheduled during the day. It will warn you before it starts if you are using the machine. Also, after the first backup, I feel no real performance hit using the machine while it is backing your machine up.

Also backups take all of 5 minutes for my machine. It's done before you even notice it.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
And here is a NEWSFLASH: we are talking about laptops => they are designed to be movable and might not be connected to the LAN of the WHS 90% of the time.

If you want to be able to back up anywhere, you could also use a VPN (Hamachi, Windows, or OpenVPN all work) and connect with WiFi to the local network, with a "foreign" wired network that has an Internet connection, or with a cellular Internet connection. WHS backups across a VPN or WiFi can work pretty well if you accept the probable loss of speed because of the slow connection.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: heymrdj

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: heymrdj


As Virge said, it won't work on battery mode. If it's not on the LAN nothing happens. WOW didn't think of that did you!

NEWSFLASH!!: All that I typed is for a network of...get this..get it now i know it's hard... 4 laptops! 4 always on the move academic laptops, 3 Vista and a XP. OMG THE AMAZING!!!111!1

Again, you need engineering skills.

Wow. Here's a
Sounds to me like you are a true master engineer.
And you need some manners.
What are you? a 12yr old high school student that thinks he is an engineer because he set up 1 WHS?
And your laptops are always on the move? Really? Doesn't sound to me like they are because otherwise, you would run into the same issue as I. Your laptops are connected to the WHS LAN a maximum of 1 day every week? Really?
Now please stop trolling!

The whole point for this WHS setup is that it is transparent for end users.
There should be NO SCHEDULED backups, only backups when the laptops go IDLE while on the local LAN (I am very doubtful that VPNs would work due to their slow connection speed in 90% of the cases).

 

[heymrdj]

Then you in your douchbagery of transparentness would remove the laptop while backing up yes? Please in your mightiness show me one piece of backup software that can hard break a system image backup automatically for the person and that backup still work 100%. My laptop sees my WHS server maybe 2 times a week, 3 times if it's lucky. The WHS server is scheduled to do them at night which is when the laptop would be sitting idle. But I have had to be on the go so instead I do this neat manual backup. I go down to the taskbar see, and right click the WHS symbol. When the laptop is on the lan this symbol is green. I can click backup now, and boom, while i'm eating or doing some other mundane task, I have a complete backup getting done. Now I have canceled them before mid go before, which of course makes an incomplete backup which WHS destroys the next go around, as those serve me know purpose in the event of a drive failure. But I can normally afford for the laptop so sit on the LAN as I'm using it for the 15 min to 1 hour it takes for a full backup update to take place. I once moved about 90GB of data though so that obviously too much longer, about 5 hours over night. But that was wireless, if I had plugged it into the network would have went much sooner.

Again, no problem.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: heymrdj


Then you in your douchbagery of transparentness would remove the laptop while backing up yes? Please in your mightiness show me one piece of backup software that can hard break a system image backup automatically for the person and that backup still work 100%. My laptop sees my WHS server maybe 2 times a week, 3 times if it's lucky. The WHS server is scheduled to do them at night which is when the laptop would be sitting idle. But I have had to be on the go so instead I do this neat manual backup. I go down to the taskbar see, and right click the WHS symbol. When the laptop is on the lan this symbol is green. I can click backup now, and boom, while i'm eating or doing some other mundane task, I have a complete backup getting done. Now I have canceled them before mid go before, which of course makes an incomplete backup which WHS destroys the next go around, as those serve me know purpose in the event of a drive failure. But I can normally afford for the laptop so sit on the LAN as I'm using it for the 15 min to 1 hour it takes for a full backup update to take place. I once moved about 90GB of data though so that obviously too much longer, about 5 hours over night. But that was wireless, if I had plugged it into the network would have went much sooner.

Again, no problem.

Please stop trolling!

As I said before:
Then what is the point of WHS? If I have to do it manually, I might as well use the image backup from Vista and a NAS!
But you don't seem to get that so please leave this thread alone!

 

[heymrdj]

Originally posted by: coolVariable

Originally posted by: heymrdj


Then you in your douchbagery of transparentness would remove the laptop while backing up yes? Please in your mightiness show me one piece of backup software that can hard break a system image backup automatically for the person and that backup still work 100%. My laptop sees my WHS server maybe 2 times a week, 3 times if it's lucky. The WHS server is scheduled to do them at night which is when the laptop would be sitting idle. But I have had to be on the go so instead I do this neat manual backup. I go down to the taskbar see, and right click the WHS symbol. When the laptop is on the lan this symbol is green. I can click backup now, and boom, while i'm eating or doing some other mundane task, I have a complete backup getting done. Now I have canceled them before mid go before, which of course makes an incomplete backup which WHS destroys the next go around, as those serve me know purpose in the event of a drive failure. But I can normally afford for the laptop so sit on the LAN as I'm using it for the 15 min to 1 hour it takes for a full backup update to take place. I once moved about 90GB of data though so that obviously too much longer, about 5 hours over night. But that was wireless, if I had plugged it into the network would have went much sooner.

Again, no problem.

Please stop trolling!

As I said before:
Then what is the point of WHS? If I have to do it manually, I might as well use the system based backup from Vista and a NAS!
But you don't seem to get that so please leave this thread alone!

Where does the system backup make a system image and bootable disc that you can restore an as is system from? Where is the containment of this individual file / disc image combination into one manageble package? Where is the compression that can make this package half the size of the original? Where's the management of multiple computers?

You're loosing one piece still. With the NAS way you still can't have an effective backup if you're interrupting it.

PS: It's not trolling, it's not even a push for WHS, I couldn't care less if you use it. But you're spewing non truths about a software that works damned well for what it designs for, a piece of software even some corporate apps have trouble contending with.

 

[bsobel]

Then what is the point of WHS? If I have to do it manually, I might as well use the image backup from Vista and a NAS!

If you have a laptop, then you might be right a NAS and image backup from Windows would be fine. But as you said laptops (plural) you wont get the data reduction on the backups you'll get from WHS using windows image backup and a NAS. If you have a few machines (like I do) that alone is reason to use WHS (even if you need to start a manual backup occasionally)

Bill

 

[bsobel]

So, essentially WHS doesn't offer anything above and beyond what a NAS and Vista backup provide. At 10% of the cost.

WHS provides single instance storage for the backup and as such the related space savings. A NAS and Vista backup do not.

 

[RebateMonger]

CoolVariable, if you find a better backup solution than WHS, please let me know.

I'll eliminate its ability to manage any combination of random hard drives as the backup location, its ability manage all backups from a single console, the health monitoring of all the PCs on the network, and the single-instance storage that greatly reduces the backup size of most systems.

Just find software that:

Makes full image backups
Keeps dozens of versions of the backups for each PC
Eliminates manual management of the backups
Works with ALL versions of XP and Vista (only Vista Ultimate, Enterprise, and Business will do image backups natively)
Costs less than $10 apiece to back up ten PCs

When you find it, please let me know so I can explore it. If you can find anything that even comes CLOSE, then let me know.