SBS Imaging and Backup suggestions - urgent.

[seedubya]

Hi all,

I have a customer that is backing up about 50Gb (15 OS and 35 Files) of data (growing at about 15% p.a.) that's looking to meet the following conditions when backing up their Fujitsu Siemens SBS 2003 Server inc. MS Exchange (10 Mailboxes).

- Be able to recover quickly from an complete server crash, either restoring a complete image to a repaired server OR to a brand new server
- be able to recover individual files and folders very quickly
- retain up to 6 months (or even more) of file backups (how many images should we retain?)
- backups need to run overnight and be stored on USB hard disks.

I need suggestions for both the software (if two are required that's fine) and the backup routine. They don't want tape or online, just usb hdd kept offsite.

This is kinda urgent as I need to get a quote in by tomorrow morning.

TIA
CW

 

[purple_minion]

Hi all,

I have a customer that is backing up about 50Gb (15 OS and 35 Files) of data (growing at about 15% p.a.) that's looking to meet the following conditions when backing up their Fujitsu Siemens SBS 2003 Server inc. MS Exchange (10 Mailboxes).

- Be able to recover quickly from an complete server crash, either restoring a complete image to a repaired server OR to a brand new server
- be able to recover individual files and folders very quickly
- retain up to 6 months (or even more) of file backups (how many images should we retain?)
- backups need to run overnight and be stored on USB hard disks.

I need suggestions for both the software (if two are required that's fine) and the backup routine. They don't want tape or online, just usb hdd kept offsite.

This is kinda urgent as I need to get a quote in by tomorrow morning.

TIA
CW

Not my field I know, but everyone swears by acronis here it seems. Last I looked they had all kinds of enterprise and business products, surely one of those must backup servers and ms exchange.

Something like this
http://www.acronis.com/smb/products/ARExchange/
There are also ones for enterprise but are twice the price!

Sorry it's late, good luck.

 

[Flyingbull]

I use Symantec Ghost, it allows me to set up a sechedule for daily and weekly backup dates, can be setup to shut down the system after it is done, will work with USB and networked drives, and recovers pretty nicely as well. My network is peer-to-peer so I don't use the tools the enterprise has, but supposedly you can remotely control the backups for computers as well from the main server. The back-ups can be encrypted, and compressed. Also, because drives fill up quickly, I have it setup that it will send me an e-mail when it fails the back up.

 

[seedubya]

@purple_minion - thanks, looks good. You're not late BTW. Ireland is currently 6 hours ahead of your location. I mean tomorrow 26th.
@flyingbull - thanks but it seems that Ghost is unsupported on SBS or any server OS for that matter.

 

[Flyingbull]

@purple_minion - thanks, looks good. You're not late BTW. Ireland is currently 6 hours ahead of your location. I mean tomorrow 26th.
@flyingbull - thanks but it seems that Ghost is unsupported on SBS or any server OS for that matter.

Ghost wasn't supported four years ago for SBS to run in the background as service,(but you could boot up in it and do an image that way) it is now, and has been since the enterprise version came out three years ago. I don't know off the top of my head if it supports Windows 2008, but I do know it supports windows 2003 , w2k3sp1,2.

They call it Ghost Solution Suite Now:
More Information

 

[seedubya]

@Flyingbull - thanks again but it still seems upon reading the documentation that the actual imaging of SBS2003 is not supported. The suite will run on SBS to remote image workstations alright. It seems slightly ambiguous. However I can't use something unless I'm 100% - this client is litigious.

 

[Flyingbull]

I'll check with my office in Oregon when they get up, they use SBS2003 and Ghost enterprise -- I don't support them directly, so I'll check and see what the deal is, I know they had a hard drive failure last year, and they didn't bitch once so I know it wasn't that big of a deal for them to recover.

 

[TimeCode]

Not my field I know, but everyone swears by acronis here it seems. Last I looked they had all kinds of enterprise and business products, surely one of those must backup servers and ms exchange.

Something like this
http://www.acronis.com/smb/products/ARExchange/
There are also ones for enterprise but are twice the price!

Sorry it's late, good luck.

I have Acronis SBS version running at my church and it has worked quite well. For an image creator, I can't think of anything better. And it works with Volume Shadow Service.

 

[seedubya]

Thanks Tim,

have you any suggestions about how often I should image? I was thinking once a month, before patch Tuesday, with incremental file backups on a daily basis and a full file backup once weekly. Also, with regard to Acronis for SBS should I also go for the Exchange add-on?

 

[purple_minion]

@purple_minion - thanks, looks good. You're not late BTW. Ireland is currently 6 hours ahead of your location. I mean tomorrow 26th.
@flyingbull - thanks but it seems that Ghost is unsupported on SBS or any server OS for that matter.

Sorry, I meant late as in late a night here. I had an interview today and I just couldn't sleep last night. My mind already has a problem with shutting down at night, it just keeps running (not unlike a machine I've seen!!!), and added to that the "what if's" didn't help.

 

[TimeCode]

Thanks Tim,

have you any suggestions about how often I should image? I was thinking once a month, before patch Tuesday, with incremental file backups on a daily basis and a full file backup once weekly. Also, with regard to Acronis for SBS should I also go for the Exchange add-on?

Sorry this is so late!!!

I would consider going with the Exchange but I would base it on their budget and how mission critical their email is. The SBS version does back it up but is not optimized for doing Exchange.

If you're looking for a complete imaging service, the SBS version will definitely keep you covered.

I have the server at church do a complete image 2x per week so they never lose more than a couple days of work. This is what the Executive Pastor and I agreed on for numerous reasons. If it had been up to me, we would have had 2 USB drives and left one of them constantly plugged in to do small incremental backups and moved the full-image drive after it was completed.