Backup upon detection

[Lodgey]

Hello Everyone,

I have a client that would like to backup their employee’s data files when they are present in the office. They would like the backup to start when any of the employee’s laptop ip's are detected within the office vicinity. I have looked at several backup software applications but nothing that is capable of doing such a task. I would like to use Acronis True Image Echo Server and maybe use the acroniscmd option to perform the backup.
Has anyone any ideas?

[DimaYasny]

yes, run a script that would test the particular PC for connectivity, say once every hour. once you get a ping reply, or snmp trap trigger, run another script to connect and backup

[Lodgey]

Thanks for the help, I just need to work out a script.
Any ideas on that?

[DimaYasny]

Thanks for the help, I just need to work out a script.
Any ideas on that?

list of laptop names in a text file
use the FOR command in a batch script to ping the PCs and output the results to another text file
for all those that answered run a robocopy script to backup the files.

OR, get something like OCS-NG, install the agents on the workstations and use it to generate online reports

[Lodgey]

Thanks DimaYasny,

I'm not so experienced when it comes to batch files but so far I have created one that detects a list of IP's from a text file. I had planned to use robocopy but my client would like incremental backups in the form of an image.
I know that acronis has a cmd option so with a little more nutting out of batch files I might be able to trigger an acroniscmd from the batch file that detects the ip and create the incremental backup.
Sounds good in theory.

[DimaYasny]

both xcopy and robocopy, as well as ntbackup, have the possibility ob backing up only the files that changed since last backup

but if you want to use an image, I won't be the one to stop you

[Lodgey]

Hey DimaYasny,

Been trying to figure this script out and have so far come up with something that appears to work. As i am not so confident at working with script and need to learn more i was hoping you would be able to help. This script appears to work O.K as i have only one laptop name in the txt file.
Do I need to pause it for a while before continuing to ping the next laptop name?
Would this script fail to ping the remaining list of laptops if the first one was unreachable?
If more than one laptop is in office would it backup all of them in the one task?

@echo off
For /f %%a in (C:\Computers.txt) do ping %%a -n 3 
if errorlevel 1 goto end
if errorlevel 0 start c:\acronis.cmd
:end

Thanks

[DimaYasny]

the easiest way to find out is to put an invalid PC name in the list and try

[Lodgey]

The scenario is now a little more complicated.
If the laptop is in the office for most of the day I need to prevent any further acronis incremental backups from being triggered within that 24hr period.
Is there something i can add to the script that would prevent further backups for the day or continue polling until the device is discovered and the backup complete?

[DimaYasny]

ping it