Large Business Backup Solution

[idealcomputers.ca]

Hey Technibble

I am currently quoting a large job but am dabbling into some unknown territory. Client has multiple servers (fileshare, web and PACS) none being backed up, they want to implement a backup plan that could possibly include multiple drives and hot swapping multiple drives out ocassionally for offsite backup incase of fire flood or theft.

My Backup Plan:
1.Setup Cobian Backup on any indivual machines that need indivual backups done and have them backup to their mapped drives on their file share server.

2.Have fileshare server, pacs and web servers setup to backup to hotswappable backup "device"

My Question/Problem
I do not know what device/server to use to setup this type of major backup and also how to set it up as i mainly specialize in smaller home backups to external drives.

Suggestions please!
A. What should i do to back this up
B. Your thoughts on cobian and anyone suggest anything different?

 

[@ncient geek]

Hey Technibble

My Backup Plan:
1.Setup Cobian Backup on any indivual machines that need indivual backups done and have them backup to their mapped drives on their file share server.

2.Have fileshare server, pacs and web servers setup to backup to hotswappable backup "device"

My Question/Problem
I do not know what device/server to use to setup this type of major backup and also how to set it up as i mainly specialize in smaller home backups to external drives.

Too little information to really give an educated opinion, but you should use a professional backup solution instead of Cobian. IMHO the best cheaper one on the market right now is BackupAssist. Very versatile, can back up to tape, SAN, NAS, external USB etc. We have several hundred companies backed up with BackupAssist for the Windows servers and have not regretted it yet (contrary to e.g. Symantec BackupExec and Acronis Enterprise Server which will behave erratically once in a while, or even silently corrupt backups so they can not be recovered (4 cases last year, 1 this year)

Workstations can best be backed up using imaging technology. If your budget is tight, try Macrium. The 2525 version has almost no bugs and is very stable.

Good luck

 

[chrisaroz]

I'm a fan of NAS' running Windows File Server OS (special version of their server OS). You can get one with enough storage to start, and then add attached storage to the server as their needs go. They run a couple grand to start off (not including backup software).

Dell makes some nice ones (PowerVault), probably the NX300 or NX3000 would be sufficient.