How do you backup laptop users' data?

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Permalink Reply by Matt Simmons on March 12, 2009 at 6:55pm

Is there a single, uniform place where your users keep their data?

How often do your users bring the laptops back into the office?

Do you just want to backup files, or the registry as well?


I specifically don't backup my laptop users' data. They aren't permitted (by policy, not technology) to keep client data on there, and whenever they work, they do it remotely through the VPN.

The only thing that I would consider backing up would be the user's Application Data and registry keys related to software licenses. I don't have a solution for that yet, so in the event of a loss, we've got to manually recreate all that.

It hasn't happened yet, but then, I've got < 20 users. I'm interested in other peoples' solutions too.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Stoklosa on March 12, 2009 at 8:39pm

We only let loan laptops to users so they can remote desktop into their work PCs, wouldn't want to open the can of worms that you're dealing with now.. I'd also be concerned about users taking data out of the company.. who knows what they do outside the office with usb devices, file transfers, losing the laptop, or having it 'stolen'. But, if you must.. http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html might be a nice free program that makes backups quick as it uses the rsync method for transfers of only changed data. I always try to make use of open source and GPL software before even thinking of buying a commercial product.

also, aside from the backup issue, I'd highly recommend truecrypt to encrypt the whole drive to protect the data in case the laptop gets lost or stolen. also, completely free.

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Permalink Reply by Julian Regel on March 12, 2009 at 10:47pm

Hi Matt - some of our users will be out of the office for several weeks at a time, but they have VPN access back to the network. In terms of what to to back up, I'm only concerned with their documents. We could rebuild the laptops from an image to get the apps back and we don't have software with specific licences that need to be monitored.

Hi Paul - To address some of the [valid] concerns you mention, we're currently in the process of implementing a mandatory external device encryption product called Sanctuary (not personally involved, so haven't actually seen it yet). Our laptops are already encrypted using Checkpoint's Pointsec product.

Thanks for both you comments.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Hengesbach on March 16, 2009 at 1:57am

Julian,

For better / worse we've stuck with Offline folders and redirection. Laptop users are directed that only files kept in My Docs will be backed up when in the office or using VPN. Yeah offline folders are not perfect and have their quirks but they are "free" - I'd say they are much better in XP than 2000. I'm definitely curious what others are doing as well.

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Permalink Reply by Rob Butterworth on March 16, 2009 at 10:48am

Some years ago in a previous position we used NetBackup Professional, a CDP backup product that could, if you wanted, also take a full image of a laptop which could be restored from a bootable DVD. It worked *very* well when we have a dozen machines using it, but it fell apart when we expanded out to >100 laptops, especially as we ran computational chemistry, bioinformatics and molecular modelling apps that had large data sets on disk that changed very frequently.

I don't think that product exists any more, and I know we replaced it first with an in-house backup system (perl and php based) which did work pretty well, again particularly for a small set of systems, then we moved to another commercial product which, much to my embarassment I can't actually remember the name of. It was another CDP type product.

Out of all of this came some observations :

1. Backing up lots of data off laptops is a nightmare once you get beyond a handful of machines, unless you are blessed with a consistent OS build and people use standard desktop apps (ie. jsut Office and the like).
2. Once you start backing up data this way, it's hard to stop - the company as an entity doesn't like to 'give up' an insurance like this, regarless of how hard/costly it has become.
3. Continuous Data Protection is cool, if you have the resources to support it, but hard work otherwise.

In my current role there is no expectation that laptops are backed up. We use offline files, and don't generally have a huge amount of data on laptops, so it's not a problem on the whole. We are considering one day looking at a hosted CDP type product like Mozy Pro. I use Carbonite at home to keep my photos backup up off-site and it works very well.

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Permalink Reply by Todd Thatcher on March 17, 2009 at 2:42pm

At this office we maintain a library of ghost images that are maintained by our PC tech. All laptop users have VPN access. It is up to them to make sure that they upload any important data to the NAS. Luckily for me, Executive management recognizes that backups are everyone's responsibility.

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Permalink Reply by John McGrath on March 17, 2009 at 7:31pm

We use off line folders synchronized with our file server.

We have a base image software platform, and do not allow customers any installation rights. Our updates, patches, and AV updates are delivered when the customer logs into the computer on the network.

So far, it works well for us, and reduces the down time for our customers.

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Permalink Reply by Luqman on March 20, 2009 at 7:54pm

One option is to use Connected Backup software, it's a central VPN automatic backup solution for Laptops, I guess from IBM.

However, it needs an investment in the infrastructure, if you basically consider backing up say: 20GB for each user and you have 100 user in you company, so basically, the bottom line is around 2T. But imagine if you have 100000 users!!

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