This license if available for both – Hyper-V and Vmware hypervisors, so pick your platform and go test Veeam. In our opinion, it is one of the top 3 backup software platforms for virtual environments. It has certain limitations (lack of tape support, lack of diverse storage connectivity methods (FTP, Amazon S3, etc), fairly rigid scheduling mechanism that doesn’t allow for certain backup scenarios and more), but for the money – the Essentials Kit is the best value on the market for most small businesses.

UPDATE: Just learned that Veeam will be introducing GFS (grand father, father, son) type scheduling mechanism in their Backup and Recovery product. From what I hear it may come as soon as B&R 6.5, but there is a chance it will be delayed until version 7. To those who don’t know – veeam has only a very basic scheduling mechanism for backup retention which is causing some headaches for administrators. Right now one has to use custom scripts to take backups in particular scheduling system, which leaves out backup information in the Veeam block change database. But appears Veeam got an earful from the clients looking for this feature, so they are working on implementing it soon.

At the same time Microsoft is trying to amp up the “chatter” about the new OS in social media, on news sites and in traditional media.

There is a very big reason for low price and major effort to hype up Windows 8. And that reason is that Windows 8 is going to be a flop in terms of sales and adoption rates.

You see, while Microsoft had put a lot of new features and “improvements” into this version of their desktop operating system, they did it out of necessity to make it feel “new” and not because those features have been requested by the users. Let’s start with the Tiles screen and paradigm. Instead of a traditional desktop, user is presented with a rather useless view of icons and badges that display information about a given program. One may see an icon for photoshop and next to it an icon for an e-mail client with an overlaid number of new messages and next to these there will be a link to a shopping portal that will open in a browser. These particular changes come from Microsoft’s desire to get into tablets. Even recent Windows phones that feature this concept have been nothing but a large scale test for a tablet UI. Now it will be blended into a fully featured operating system, which will have some of its management and usability features cut in order to force users to try the new tablet UI.

The Start button will be gone, the familiar control panel which was a jump point to adjusting almost any setting on the system has been reduced to a useless, watered down screen. Instead of most setting being accessible from this single place they will be scattered under many applications, utilities and sub-menus under sub-menues.

Anyone who is using Windows right now to get things done and not to just surf the web and buy Angry Birds for their 5 year old, will find out how unwelcoming Windows 8 is to the user. Instead of being logical and familiar, it is nothing but confusing and distant.

We have already advised our clients to upgrade to Windows 7 and skip Windows 8 all together. This will save them money and a lot of head-ache for the next 3-5 years. Despite low price, the amount of money wasted in terms of lost productivity and IT work that produces not benefit to organizations will be tremendous. So far the recommendation has been accept by decision makers responsible for around a thousand users. As time goes by and Windows 8 hits retail – this count will rise after IT heads test the new OS out and make up their own mind (which i can guarantee will not be in favor of Windows 8).

Unfortunately, emboldened by Windows XP and 7 success, desire to get a bite of tabled market, strong pressure from investors to make more money, Microsoft has found itself in a position where it has to release something, even if it is half baked and destined to fail. Windows 8 will be what Windows 98 and Vista did for Windows 2000/XP and 7 some years back – it will become a stepping stone and a black eye on the company’s face, which will lead to a more refined and substantially more user friendly OS after Windows 8.

In the meantime, we will see paid advertising and subsidized “reviews” touting strength of the new OS with corporate users completely ignoring it. This will go on until Microsoft threatens to stop selling Windows 7 to OEM computer manufacturers and eventually releases Windows 9 (or whatever the new version will be called).

At this time – we are advising all corporate users to skip Windows 8 and remain on Windows 7 for the next 3-5 years.

Since the image library scattered across different computers was around 2TB in size, we chose QNAP 459PRO II. In RAID 5 configuration the total usable size of the system filled with 3TB hard drive is slightly under 9TBs. This way there is enough room to grow and the price tag is under $1500.

After initial configuration of the system, we’ve created a share and gave domain users right to write to it, then enabled RSYNC backups to the NAS:

Home –> Application Servers–> Backup Server

Create a user-name and password for authentication purposes – this will prevent unauthorized RSYNC access.

After this we’ve downloaded and install RSYNC for Windows called DeltaCopy which was isntalled into the root of the drive C:\ on all workstations where files had been stored. Now it is time configure the DeltaCopy client to connect to the QNAP Backup server.

Click on “Add new profile” and fill Profile name, IP address and Virtual Directory Name. Now here is what you need to know: “Virtual Directory Name” is where you put in the name of the share where you want to store the files on the QNAP. In our case it was called “backups”.

Next – add the folder that you want to sync to the QNAP (in our case the files we want to backup are in G:\CAMERA).

Next you tab into the OPTIONS screen and uncheck “remove deleted files from server“. If this setting is checked, next time you remove a file from your folder and the sync runs – the removed files will also be removed from the QNAP!

In AUTHENTICATION tab enter the same username and password that you’ve entered on QNAP in “Backup server” properties.

The last piece of this simple puzzle is to automate the entire process. However, if you try to use the built-in scheduler and find out that the job never runs – you may want to modify the schedule as outlined below.

Here is how a typical, automatically created schedule task looks like. In the line where it says “C:\DeltaCopy\Images.dcp” we need to change the line so it looks like this: C:\DeltaCopy\DeltaC.exe Images.dcp

Once you change that line, provide your account credentials and save the schedule  task – it will run at whatever day and time you’ve specified.

Viola! You have working RSYNC from a workstation to your network attached QNAP storage device!

Such configuration will make future QNAP offerings the perfect backup storage and low cost iSCSI expansion storage. For example ability to write data quickly via iSCSI over multiple nics to SAS drives will make backup times with Veeam faster as one will be able to push several backup streams at the same time without fear of QNAP being the bottleneck.

We are eagerly awaiting on the announcement of the new devices which is expected to happen around end of October or beginning of November of 2011.

New features and improvements which will be important to small businesses are these:
1 – built-in virus scanning with ClamAV – an Open Source anti-virus solution widely used on computers and servers. The virus signature database is automatically updated on regular schedule and is then used during the scheduled scans of the content on the NAS.

2 – iSCSI snapshots now allow backups of iSCSI served volumes without a fear of inconsistent data state or major performance loss. The snapshot backup can then be restored in with a few clicks in through web-management interface. The one really important feature is the ability to restore to a separate LUN instead of overwriting the current one. This way two copies (current with possibly bad data and backed up version) can be brought online for examination if needed.

3 – Service binding which allows assigning specific protocols and functions to a particular network interface on the device. This is really useful for those who are using QNAP for public access (FTP, web file management, website hosting, etc).

4 – RADIUS network authentication and account control. This significantly improves security in small business networks that do not have specialized security systems for controlling network access and account logins.

5 – External hard drive encryption will now allow for safer off-site data storage. If an organization is using external drives to keep a copy of important data outside of their premise – the data used to be stored in a clear (unencrypted) state. This made it easily readable to anyone with a physical access to the hard drive. With firmware 3.5 this data can now be encrypted, so if the drive is stolen or otherwise obtained by a person with malicious intent – he or she will not be able to read the data. Replication of data to the external drive has also been improved with more options and more flexible scheduling.

Here you can read information about yet unannounced QNAP devices (big hardware changes are coming).

Here are the steps:

1. Power off the VM
2. Right click on the VM and select “Edit Settings…”
3. Select the “Options” tab
4. Click on “General” (in the “Advanced” options section)
5. Click “Configuration Parameters…” (in the pane on the right)
6. Click “Add Row”
7. Enter “cpuid.coresPerSocket” in the “Name” column
8. Enter  2 in the “Value” column
9. Click “OK”
10. Power on the VM