This whole thread has me intrigued if there is a solution for 14 machines. That's true that the incremental backups are scheduled hourly but from my system behaviour it appears to be asynchronous. So all machines would not be backing up at the same time. Regarding another TC in bridge, it would give more disk space at the same time it would seem to be the same amount of network bandwidth in the system.
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14 users on a Time Capsule?
- Thread starter Minicube
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This whole thread has me intrigued if there is a solution for 14 machines. That's true that the incremental backups are scheduled hourly but from my system behaviour it appears to be asynchronous. So all machines would not be backing up at the same time. Regarding another TC in bridge, it would give more disk space at the same time it would seem to be the same amount of network bandwidth in the system.
Turns out I'll probably only need to backup 10 users. I'm thinking of using this to make sure backups are staggered: http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/
I think backups by design in time machine are staggered. I tried to kick off three machines at the same time to backup and they staged one after the other. The other things I have noticed that doing "office work" during the day with documents / e-mail and browsing is that my backup only runs about 1 minute when it does kick off. I don't have any system performance while it is backing up, nor does my TC burp at all streaming 1080P hulu several devices while the backup is running.
You also don't use a Harry Homeowner backup solution to save the data for a business, but I digress. I'd at minimum have it on RAID. 6 months down the road you've lost that single drive and Susie needs that critical file restored you're up the proverbial creek.
I run an IT department, if I interviewed a candidate that told me that he had implemented a TC as a solution for a business I'd show him the door.
And if you suggested a RAID for backup there are many people that would not have let you in the door in the first place...
http://serverfault.com/questions/2888/why-is-raid-not-a-backup
The user will only need her file restored if she has deleted it off her computer, computer is stolen, etc., and it will be on the TC backup. If the TC drive goes belly up, the file will be replaced with the original from user's computer in a timely manner. Very unlikely that both the original and TC hard drive will go south at the same time.
http://serverfault.com/questions/2888/why-is-raid-not-a-backup
The user will only need her file restored if she has deleted it off her computer, computer is stolen, etc., and it will be on the TC backup. If the TC drive goes belly up, the file will be replaced with the original from user's computer in a timely manner. Very unlikely that both the original and TC hard drive will go south at the same time.
You should follow that link yourself sometime and read more than a few words.
There is a difference between storing backup on RAID and letting RAID replace backup.
The former is worthy of consideration, the latter despicable.
The question at hand here is if TC and time machine can handle a 14 (now 10) user environment. Question is still open.
My understanding:
The system is designed that it will not allow excessive bandwidth to the backup in process by design so network performance not fully consumed with the backup.
TC / Time Machine will stager backup requests so they are not occurring simultaneously.
The system currently will also support additional USB drive plugged into the time capsule.
The system supports multiple users and keeps the following backups.
My understanding:
The system is designed that it will not allow excessive bandwidth to the backup in process by design so network performance not fully consumed with the backup.
TC / Time Machine will stager backup requests so they are not occurring simultaneously.
The system currently will also support additional USB drive plugged into the time capsule.
The system supports multiple users and keeps the following backups.
- Hourly backups for the past 24 hours
- Daily backups for the past month
- Weekly backups for all previous months
- The oldest backups are deleted as the disk becomes full
- The time machine internal disk can be archived off to another media if the administrator so desires and actions
This is not very good advice. If your "job is on the line", then you wouldn't have to worry about breaking compatibility, since you wouldn't be deploying a new OS until it was fully tested first, right?
I think this poster said it best:
Using a Time Capsule for company backups in a multi-user environment is an awful idea, sorry. Time Capsule is made for home users who want to back up their vacation pictures, and home movies.
I highly suggest picking up a Synology NAS, and using their Time Machine feature. I personally have a Synology 1511+ with (4) 2TB HDD's formatted in a Synology Hybrid RAID array (basically a RAID5) and it works wonders. This is a 5-bay NAS, but I'm only using 4 HDD's currentyl. It's amazing quick over wireless, read/write speeds are awesome. In addition, Time Machine works with it perfectly. For a business environment, you can create a new user for each employee on the Synology, and then give them set disk quota, which would basically allocate them a certain amount of fixed disk space. This is recommend because if you don't put boundaries in place, Time Machine will keep backups until the drive is full.
Synology just released the 1512+, which is a slightly newer NAS model, which includes USB 3.0 and some other features. The 1512+ is also a 5 bay model. They also have the 1812+, which features 8 bay's, and could fit plenty of storage.
Whatever you do, you need to be sure to backup your NAS. Many home users do not, and thats OK - because many times the data is filled with *replaceable* media, such as DVD and BluRay rips, etc. However for non-replaceable data (aka WORK), you should perform backups. Pick up a cheap eSATA docking station, and a couple 2TB or 3TB HDD's. Put one HDD into the docking station, and plug the dock into the NAS via eSATA. Then configure backups to run on a schedule, and you can swap out the drive every few days. If you're data is really critical, I suggest backing it up to an offsite location, and moving the drive(s) offsite. (home, safety deposit box, etc)
Any imperical data about how many users for Time Capsule ?
I work for a fortune 100 company and have for decades. Although e-mail / systems and critical data is backed up, it is up to the user to backup their own user related files. I faithfully have created backups. After two hard drive failures and replacements in a year and the pain of rebuild on different corporate issued hardware I made a decision I will never regret.
I purchased my own MacBook Air. I have it backed up on Time Machine when home or working from home. I love the fact that I get hourly incremental backups. I've built new machines with ease from scratch.
One can argue that Time Capsule / Time Machine is or is not designed for a small business but there remains to be any facts presented in this thread if the environment will support 10 users or not. I'm having a hard time understanding the discussions about network bandwidth etc. The reality is that regardless of your backup solution, if it is over the network, the same ergs of work will be done. I also have some difficulty understanding the contention issues being brought up. Not that they might exist, I just do not understand that assumption. I have not experienced ANY contention issues of multiple devices with TM/TC. Granted, mine is a 3 machine environment. Architecturally things seem to take their turn to backup. I have even tried to force all three to kickoff at the same time.
Lastly is "drive capacity" constraints. After the full backup is done, these incremental backups seem to keep things efficiently. If/when the drive gets full (which mine never has) only "older" things get rolled off. At home I experience no noticeable impacts of bandwidth when any of my machines are backing up. This is at the same time I am making VOIP calls thru my macbook air as well as streaming 1080P to multiple devices in the home simultaneously. I do understand that part of the TC/TM architecture is to drip feed these backups in such a way other users network don't get impacted. If that is the architecture how would more backups impact the environment if they wait their turn for hourly incremental backups and network is still good?
I'm not lobbying one way or the other however I would like to see some empirical data about if this environment can support a small business or not. Perhaps not, but what are the real thresholds of this environment rather than perceived. I do find TC/TM is simple and elegant useful solution.
I work for a fortune 100 company and have for decades. Although e-mail / systems and critical data is backed up, it is up to the user to backup their own user related files. I faithfully have created backups. After two hard drive failures and replacements in a year and the pain of rebuild on different corporate issued hardware I made a decision I will never regret.
I purchased my own MacBook Air. I have it backed up on Time Machine when home or working from home. I love the fact that I get hourly incremental backups. I've built new machines with ease from scratch.
One can argue that Time Capsule / Time Machine is or is not designed for a small business but there remains to be any facts presented in this thread if the environment will support 10 users or not. I'm having a hard time understanding the discussions about network bandwidth etc. The reality is that regardless of your backup solution, if it is over the network, the same ergs of work will be done. I also have some difficulty understanding the contention issues being brought up. Not that they might exist, I just do not understand that assumption. I have not experienced ANY contention issues of multiple devices with TM/TC. Granted, mine is a 3 machine environment. Architecturally things seem to take their turn to backup. I have even tried to force all three to kickoff at the same time.
Lastly is "drive capacity" constraints. After the full backup is done, these incremental backups seem to keep things efficiently. If/when the drive gets full (which mine never has) only "older" things get rolled off. At home I experience no noticeable impacts of bandwidth when any of my machines are backing up. This is at the same time I am making VOIP calls thru my macbook air as well as streaming 1080P to multiple devices in the home simultaneously. I do understand that part of the TC/TM architecture is to drip feed these backups in such a way other users network don't get impacted. If that is the architecture how would more backups impact the environment if they wait their turn for hourly incremental backups and network is still good?
I'm not lobbying one way or the other however I would like to see some empirical data about if this environment can support a small business or not. Perhaps not, but what are the real thresholds of this environment rather than perceived. I do find TC/TM is simple and elegant useful solution.
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I think the issue is there is no empirical data and what you see in this thread is a lot of speculation.
You should follow that link yourself sometime and read more than a few words.
There is a difference between storing backup on RAID and letting RAID replace backup.
The former is worthy of consideration, the latter despicable.
He doesn't get it. It's over his head.
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I don't think so.
Best backup is none of the above really, because if the concern is business continuity the data should be offsite. Enroll in Crashplan or similar and be done with it. Backup media storage and the machines you're backing up shouldn't be in the same location if BC is a concern. Thief breaks in, fire, flood, etc you're out of business. And you have *zero* way to recover.
I would agree that one also needs some off site redundancy at some level. I'm not totally trusting of someone else's cloud (yet). I believe there is a balance of risk / investment that is a personal decision we all have to make. I keep and rotate archive from TC off site, also recently moved my TC into a cool vault. To keep things a bit in perspective we're talking about a 10 person small business here, not that their data is any less important but exploring "could" a person build a backup environment here or is that outside the system design boundries. When apple says TC supports up to 50 users. I don't know if that means all running time machine or not. My guess not.
I once was involved in a project where we stashed hardware at a cold site out of state and restored it all from salt mine backups periodically for testing. Paid millions per year annual contract to have free computing space and iron ready and available and spinning. I don't think this thread is about that nor is it a home solution. Maybe in the lower middle somewhere. I did go back and read Apple's overview they do say "There are no cables, and you can back up all the computers in your home to a central location." So as one poster points out it is likely targets the home environment. It would be interesting to hear from someone actually using TC/TM on a grander scale.
Restricting user access
I'm finding this to be a very timely thread, as I'm in the process of setting up a Time Capsule to handle backups for 3 users in our office environment. It's actually been up and running for about a week now, and so far we haven't run into any performance issues (although I'll be looking into Synology due to several of the other points that have been raised here).
One major issue I'm running into is that I seem to be unable to restrict access to a given backup according to user. As such, anyone who is able to access the shared drive can browse through any other backup at will. I keep thinking I must be overlooking some obvious solution to this problem, but so far I'm coming up empty.
Any thoughts on this - with TC or Synology?
I'm finding this to be a very timely thread, as I'm in the process of setting up a Time Capsule to handle backups for 3 users in our office environment. It's actually been up and running for about a week now, and so far we haven't run into any performance issues (although I'll be looking into Synology due to several of the other points that have been raised here).
One major issue I'm running into is that I seem to be unable to restrict access to a given backup according to user. As such, anyone who is able to access the shared drive can browse through any other backup at will. I keep thinking I must be overlooking some obvious solution to this problem, but so far I'm coming up empty.
Any thoughts on this - with TC or Synology?
Are you running time machine software? Are saying when you enter time machine to restore you can restore someone else's backup? Or are you saying anyone can access the drive in finder?
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I agree. But my point, the one you completely ignored, still stands. TM back-ups to an NAS are not Apple supported. This may be fine for home use, but not corporate use. The lack of support may be part of the reason you get those dreaded error messages (the one about having to make a new back-up). These messages are not rare, but a simple Google search will show they happen quite often. And if you are backing up 14 different computers, then you'll likely become very familiar with these messages.
file access permissions issues
Any of the 3 machines can access the shared drive, but they can also browse through and access any of the backed up files from any of the other machines... so they can definitely restore individual files. Not sure if they can restore a complete image, but the situation as it stands is obviously a deal breaker in a corporate environment.
Any of the 3 machines can access the shared drive, but they can also browse through and access any of the backed up files from any of the other machines... so they can definitely restore individual files. Not sure if they can restore a complete image, but the situation as it stands is obviously a deal breaker in a corporate environment.
To repeat, my original question was whether anyone HAS EXPERIENCE using TC in an environment of 14 (now 10) users. I'm not interested in the speculative comments and amazing backup solutions the arrogant genii have posted. Some of the other advice, about Synology for example, was appreciated.
Someone mentioned that Apple states TC supports up to 50 users. Perhaps that just means giving them internet access? Since no one seems to have direct experience with 10 users, I've decided to go ahead and get a TC and see what actually is possible. I will then report back with some facts.
Someone mentioned that Apple states TC supports up to 50 users. Perhaps that just means giving them internet access? Since no one seems to have direct experience with 10 users, I've decided to go ahead and get a TC and see what actually is possible. I will then report back with some facts.
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