Using a Remote iMac to Backup Windows Office Network Files

[Ogion]

Hello there Mac-Land!

This is kinda funky. Most of us want to use time machine to back up to some external disk whether it be an external hard drive or a mapped network drive from a server...easy, kids stuff... But I wanna do this the other way around...

We have a Windows Network at the office powered by Windows Server 2008 SBS. All our data is stored on the server (and pushed via mapped network drives to the network computers) and then also redundantly backed up to an external drive that's physically attached to the server itself. What I would like to be able to do is perform off-site backups with an iMac which resides off-site at my home. The Data that needs to be backed up is all in mapped network drives that are accessible from the iMac via our VPN. Is there a way to tell TimeMachine to backup from the network drives to another external disk that's attached to the iMac at home? Been stumped on this for a while... or is there another program that might do this?
-Dave

 

[footunny]

rsync is all one ever needs

The command:

rsync -ahR --progress /somepath/hollywood /somepath2/wutang [email protected]:/somepath/chinatown

The explanation:

we are archiving 2 paths with progress display (if just one path, you can omit the R in -ahR) to server 1.1.1.1 using the user "admin"

You can then set this to run automatically, the beauty of it being that all future runs will bring over only CHANGED files.

I encourage you to research rsync further in case my example doesn't suit your needs.

Hope this helps,

Foo