danielowen.com

First let's get some assumptions out of the way.

• This is geared toward a relatively well connected organization. What well connected means will greatly depend on the size of the organization but for a relatively small company with maybe a few hundred GB of storage that you want to backup online a business class cable connection will probably meet the bandwidth requirements but DSL or T1 will not. The quality (downtime etc.) is actually much less important than the raw amount of data you can upload.
• I implemented a solution in an environment I previously worked in and it worked well. Watch the caveats I add throughout the document. They are from experience.
• This is very much a low tech low cost solution.

At work we have decided to backup some of our Hyper-V servers to disk using the built in Windows 2008 tools and then back that up to tape for rotation. You will find instructions for this process in this article.

Enable VSS on the Hyper-V server

Install Windows Server Backup (WSB) feature

start /w ocsetup "WindowsServe Backup"

Edit the Registry

From command line:

reg add "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WindowsServerBackup\ApplicationSupport\{66841CD4-6DED-4F4B-8F17-FD23F8DDC3DE}"

This is presented in the same vein as Lenny Zeltser’s How to Suck at Information Security.  If you have not read Lenny’s article it is highly recommended.

What makes a good backup solution?
Part 4 of 4
Other topics

What makes a good backup solution?
Part 3 of 4
Three more topics

If you have not read part one and part two you may want to start there.

In this section we will look at three more topics. First we will look at what kind of disaster we want to protect ourselves from. Then we will look at protecting the backups themselves and finally we will look at backup media.

What makes a good backup solution?
Part 2 of 4
Backup Types

If you have not read part one you may want to start there.

In this section we will look at the types of backups that are available in a modern environment. First we will start with a review of the 4 types of backups that most traditional backup systems can do. Then we will move on to newer techniques and technologies.

What makes a good backup solution?
Part 1 of 4
Critical Elements of a Backup Plan

Much like much of what is called "safe sex" would be more accurately called safer sex, I will call this safer computing.

This is in some sort of order but I will not promise order of importance because it is all important.

Over the years anyone who is even vaguely familiar with the security world has had the idea of security through obscurity being worthless drilled into our heads. While I will agree that security through obscurity is exceptionally weak security there is still a place for it in a complete security plan.

After years of hearing the argument that security through obscurity is no security at all it becomes easy to assume that obscurity does not add any level of security to a security plan. As long as obscurity is a part of an overall security plan it should never hurt and will in most circumstances improve your security.

I will give a few examples where security through obscurity can and does help.

The intention of the guide is to give a quick and easy to read guide to the pros and cons of three different approached to firewalling your home or small office. This is far from a complete guide but it will get you started in the right direction to figure out exactly what you need in order to protect yourself. This particular guide comes out of my desire to provide a quick and easy comparison for a friend who had a small business and was trying to decide what to use for protection. If you are looking for specific reviews of products I recommend the Home PC Firewall Guide.