Backup Solution

[Schoolies]

I've got a backup dilema.

Windows 2k3 - SQL server
Windows 2000 server - BRData and ScanManager apps
Windows 2000 server - File server / application specific database
Windows 2000 server - File server


I was thinking about connecting a USB external drive to the 2k3 server, purchasing Symantec LiveState Recovery Server edition for all 4 servers, and having them backed up to the external drive. The clients want something simple and something they can take off site. I chose LiveState Recovery because it "images" the servers, works with SQL, it can be recovered on dislike systems and it can be centrally managed. Price is not really an option.

Total used space on the servers is about 150GB. Total space is about: 180gb

Any recommendations / war stories please feel free to comment.

 

[nweaver]

I would get a 320GB tape drive. I don't know much about the Symantec stuff, but we either use ntbackup (non critical stuff) or some other company, enterprise level, can't remember the name. I would NOT use a USB drive, but that is me

 

[loup garou]

I've never used LiveState (backup exec and/or ntbackup usually), but I just looked at it on Symantec's site and saw it was formerly V2i Protector, which I've heard good things about. I don't think you should have to buy 4 copies, it wouldn't be much of a backup product if it didn't have some sort of remote agent service that runs on the other servers.

As for hardware, definitely tape drive, unless you want to buy half a dozen or so external drives. I won't lie, I have clients who use external drives for backups and it's just as much of a pain in the ass as tapes. You can't get around the fact that backups are one of the most annoying, but most critical IT needs. Get a high capacity tape drive, start with 5 tapes for dailies and a month-end or week-end set as well. That way, they can restore back a day, a week, or a month. You can expand on that depending on their business. Assign someone the glorious role of tape changer, and have them take the previous night's tape home with them every day. You can look into offsite secure tape storage as well, like Iron Mountain. Also, look into getting their fileservers to w2k3 for shadow copy to make non-emergency restores much, much easier. Also, I don't see a mailserver on there, no onsite mailserver to back up?

 

[Schoolies]

Thanks loup and nweaver.

There is no mail server...that is outsourced... I was looking at the exabyte drives Link

Thanks for the help.

 

[spikespiegal]

As one who's had to battle both sides of this issues, I'd like to ask the tape supporters how they restore a dead windows server with a DLT? Is there some special "boot from tape" option in the BIOS I'm unaware of?

Tape is good for carrying off site, and for incremental/differential back-ups. It's not good for much else, and certainly a lousy choice for critical system level restores.

I use Paragon's software for doing live back-ups of my servers, and a combination of tape and USB external drives for everything else. 99% of the time I just pull data off my nightly USB drive if I need to restore something and rarely go to my file of tapes in the safe.

My vote is for the USB drives, and enough of them to rotate off site.

 

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal
As one who's had to battle both sides of this issues, I'd like to ask the tape supporters how they restore a dead windows server with a DLT? Is there some special "boot from tape" option in the BIOS I'm unaware of?

Tape is good for carrying off site, and for incremental/differential back-ups. It's not good for much else, and certainly a lousy choice for critical system level restores.

I use Paragon's software for doing live back-ups of my servers, and a combination of tape and USB external drives for everything else. 99% of the time I just pull data off my nightly USB drive if I need to restore something and rarely go to my file of tapes in the safe.

My vote is for the USB drives, and enough of them to rotate off site.

Veritas Backup Exec (now Symantec?) has what they call Intelligent Disaster Recovery that will allow you to quickly bring a dead server back on-line by putting critical files on CD and then allowing you to mount your tape drive...I think. Haven't used it but I hear good things about it. FWIW

 

[pcthuglife]

we've been considering a gigabit NAS solution. maybe something with 500GB of storage mirrored.

 

[DaiShan]

Originally posted by: spikespiegal
As one who's had to battle both sides of this issues, I'd like to ask the tape supporters how they restore a dead windows server with a DLT? Is there some special "boot from tape" option in the BIOS I'm unaware of?

Tape is good for carrying off site, and for incremental/differential back-ups. It's not good for much else, and certainly a lousy choice for critical system level restores.

I use Paragon's software for doing live back-ups of my servers, and a combination of tape and USB external drives for everything else. 99% of the time I just pull data off my nightly USB drive if I need to restore something and rarely go to my file of tapes in the safe.

My vote is for the USB drives, and enough of them to rotate off site.

Attach the tape drive to a working Windows installation, throw a fresh hard drive in the machine and copy. Not difficult. Additionally, OP if you are familiar with Linux, it shouldn't be too difficult for you to use Rsync (you'll need a program such as CwRsync on the client) to do a mathematical copy of the drive to an rsync server. I currently use a custom script based on Rsync to backup several hundred computers and servers to a cluser of servers, most data is transported via PTP private connections, some are done on site and physically moved via USB drive or tape, and some are transported securely (using SSH) through the WAN. The benefit of Rsync is that you can use it to preserve hardlinks to produce truly incremental backups.

 

[Schoolies]

Thanks for the input everyone. I forgot to ask everyone's thoughts on backing up all four servers to one usb drive on the main server? I know the initial backup will take very long, but the incremental/differential backups shouldn't be a problem at night, right? Any war stories on this?