Yes. File servers should not be used for backup IMHO, they should only be used when the transfers are small. Depending on your usage (e.g. video editor), even your incremental backups might not be small.
I have three computers and they all have a local disk for backup.
Apple TV doesn't really need a big HD, I have the 40GB model, my iTunes library is nearing a gig and I just stream everything. Why would anyone buy the 160GB model?
I use a Drobo and stream to my Apple TV, my movie collection stands at about 1200 films, with TV shows and music total size is about 3.5TB. Works perfectly.
This is exactly why I've been eying a Drobo. Its redundancy implementation allows you to upgrade individual drives, unlike traditional RAID solutions that require all of the drives in the array to match.
I admit, that's a nice feature. However, if you want to share your Drobo filesystem over a network, then you need to also buy DroboShare. I get that for free with my Linux box (with support for all network sharing protocols: SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, SFTP, UPnP, and whatever comes up in the future).
You know your network better than me but if I had that many Macs and security was an issue I would have backed them up to a server HDD instead of TC.
It's my understanding that you've got to have a 10.5 server for that. We have a Mac OS X 10.4.11 server that works great, and I'm not about to fix what isn't broken.
There is a real backup system in place in the form of EMC Retrospect for Mac. It has always worked well. The actual idea was to augment its performance with the Time Machine/Time Capsule product. And at the time, it seemed like a good idea.
(Which means I should have known better!)
Someone asked how this was all set up. Well, there's not much to it. The Airport functionality is turned off, the Time Capsule does not (and cannot, in this case) act as a router, and each of the two units is plugged into an SMC GS16 gigabit switch. The gigabit switches in the Time Capsules themselves are unused.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NasserAE
I had my share of problems with TC but I discovered the trick. If you leave TC alone and don't mess with the image files it will work without glitches. When you have the "cannot mount" issue just restart TC and the Mac.
I certainly haven't played with the image files, and I doubt the users of the computers in question did either. I hadn't thought of restarting the Time Capsule hardware along with the Mac, although I'd have to say that doesn't speak well of the reliability of the software running on the device.
All of these issues, for something that Apple touted so heavily when Leopard came out, seem as though they should be fixed or unnecessary by now. The whole thing has turned me off to the product, unfortunately. I was going to buy one at home, but Carbon Copy Cloner and external hard drives have been working better and more quickly there--and not all my home machines are on Leopard yet. Some may never be. (I've not been overly impressed about a few things in Leopard. But that's another rant entirely.)
Comments
Time Capsule = Sloooooooooooooooow
Yes. File servers should not be used for backup IMHO, they should only be used when the transfers are small. Depending on your usage (e.g. video editor), even your incremental backups might not be small.
I have three computers and they all have a local disk for backup.
Apple TV doesn't really need a big HD, I have the 40GB model, my iTunes library is nearing a gig and I just stream everything. Why would anyone buy the 160GB model?
I use a Drobo and stream to my Apple TV, my movie collection stands at about 1200 films, with TV shows and music total size is about 3.5TB. Works perfectly.
This is exactly why I've been eying a Drobo. Its redundancy implementation allows you to upgrade individual drives, unlike traditional RAID solutions that require all of the drives in the array to match.
I admit, that's a nice feature. However, if you want to share your Drobo filesystem over a network, then you need to also buy DroboShare. I get that for free with my Linux box (with support for all network sharing protocols: SMB, AFP, NFS, FTP, SFTP, UPnP, and whatever comes up in the future).
You know your network better than me but if I had that many Macs and security was an issue I would have backed them up to a server HDD instead of TC.
It's my understanding that you've got to have a 10.5 server for that. We have a Mac OS X 10.4.11 server that works great, and I'm not about to fix what isn't broken.
There is a real backup system in place in the form of EMC Retrospect for Mac. It has always worked well. The actual idea was to augment its performance with the Time Machine/Time Capsule product. And at the time, it seemed like a good idea.
(Which means I should have known better!)
Someone asked how this was all set up. Well, there's not much to it. The Airport functionality is turned off, the Time Capsule does not (and cannot, in this case) act as a router, and each of the two units is plugged into an SMC GS16 gigabit switch. The gigabit switches in the Time Capsules themselves are unused.
I had my share of problems with TC but I discovered the trick. If you leave TC alone and don't mess with the image files it will work without glitches. When you have the "cannot mount" issue just restart TC and the Mac.
I certainly haven't played with the image files, and I doubt the users of the computers in question did either. I hadn't thought of restarting the Time Capsule hardware along with the Mac, although I'd have to say that doesn't speak well of the reliability of the software running on the device.
All of these issues, for something that Apple touted so heavily when Leopard came out, seem as though they should be fixed or unnecessary by now. The whole thing has turned me off to the product, unfortunately. I was going to buy one at home, but Carbon Copy Cloner and external hard drives have been working better and more quickly there--and not all my home machines are on Leopard yet. Some may never be. (I've not been overly impressed about a few things in Leopard. But that's another rant entirely.)