NAS or not

david.a.mattox

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I am looking for a way to automatically back up 80+ computers (incremental) on 3 Network Storage drives. I also want to have 3 drives set up as a file share system. Will backing the computers up over the network slow my network down? I obviously stagger the back up amongst the computers but with 80 there is only so much staggering. I want the user to be oblivious to the backup and I also want the user to be able to access and manipulate files on a shared drive over the net without hearing them complain about the speed. I am limited by budget and the restraint that I cannot set up an actual file server. Any advice on this would be appreciated.
 
Yes, backing the computers up over the network will definitely slow it down. The best way to back them up this way over the network is back them up overnight, or whenever there is the least people on the network. As for the sharing, you can set up network drives for the different departments, or groups, and add them to user profiles and what not. Where do you live and work by the way?
 
well there are obviously two ways to back up, one called push method, one called pull method.

the push method is where the client is in charge of sending the files to the central server store, Using this method you'll have to stagger the opperations because of the amount of traffic...

the second mothod is pull, use a server, (which we'll call your back up server) to retrieve the files you want to backup from the client computers. the best part about this method is you don't worry about staggering the opperation, the way I see it, you have two distinct options...

1, use backup software, this is obviously the best option from a corperate point of view, but if you are literally just copying files from computers to one large network server, there is very little benefit in paying for profesional software...

which brings us to option 2.

batch files... I suggest that you write a batch file to copy the data from the computers to the central storage location, the only negative here is that it's a little harder to get a log of the opperations (though not impossible).

either of these two methods will only copy one file at a time, so your staggering is (virtually) done for you, and there is no need to bother about setting up the staggering.
 
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