Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Windows Live Mesh 2011 - Key Component in My Backup Plan

I have recently experienced a PC failure.  The failure necessitated that I send the machine back to the manufacturer.  My business requires that I be back up and running within a few hours which technically I was because I had a spare PC.  The issues I experienced were as follows:
  • backups were a few days old - not bad but had some problems,
  • bookmarks were missing,
  • reconfiguring software took time - outlook, accounting packages, IDE environments, etc.
  • the "feel" between PC was different and took a while to get my productivity level back up.
In short, it took a few days to be back up and running normally.  I wanted a better way to seamlessly move from one environment to the other and started to look for a more automated solution.  This post explains what I did.

Windows Live Mesh 2011

I needed a program that would keep my documents, source code (that is not in source control), pst files, bookmarks, and music all in sync between two PC's and that is where Windows Live Mesh 2011 comes in.  Microsoft advertises Mesh to do three main things (http://explore.live.com/windows-live-mesh-devices-sync-upgrade-ui?wa=wsignin1.0):  Keeps files up to date across numerous computers, connect computers remotely, and sync program settings between computers -- sounds like what I needed.

I then configured my backup PC to match my working PC with respect to software and settings -- which I no longer use a "old" computer as a backup; I spent the extra money to have two computers of equal configuration for the kinds of tasks I subject them to.

I then loaded and configured Windows Mesh to sync the two computers.  Microsoft's documentation and intuitive nature of Mesh made this easy.  I can now move from one system to the other seamlessly.  If my main PC should crash now I would be back up and running in the time it takes me to sign on to my backup.  It is truly a hot back up.  I have added to this the additional precaution of using windows backup of each PC should they have to have some type of full recovery but that seems unlikely.

Another feature of Windows Mesh is that Microsoft provides 5GB of cloud storage free of charge.  I use this to sync some data to the cloud. 

If your business requires seamless PC recovery you may consider this solution.

-npv
Posted by at 9:39 AM
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good overview, but have you looked at the details of the protocol used to move the data back and forth between machines? Encrypted? With what? Microsoft is not known for always getting security right the first time. I would be interested to hear more bout the actual security built into Mesh.

December 15, 2010 3:43 AM
Nick said...

the writer above brings up a good point; the security of Windows Live Mesh. From what I can tell (not privy to the internals) communication is secured with SSL and there is no data kept on a MS site unless you use the Cloud Storage. Data on their Sky Drive is accessed using your Windows Live ID.

This said I do not sync or store my most critical data in this fashion.

December 16, 2010 9:26 AM
Anonymous said...

i also use mesh as described here - it works well. securty is a concern but overall seems ok.

December 16, 2010 8:11 PM

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