Disaster recovery/backup software

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What do you use as your primary backup software for disaster recovery of server systems and data?

I have 3 servers that I need to set up a disaster recovery solution for, 1 DC running dns, dhcp and file server functions, 1 server running exchange 2007 and dns functions and 1 server running terminal services. Backup exec is used for daily, weekly and monthly backups of data and systems. The current state is that no patches or updates have been done to these servers in over a year.

My idea is to install Acronis true image on each of these systems along with universal restore and back up the systems to a NAS system. On the exchange server I could then implement the CDP to get further protection for the email too. Would this be a viable plan?

My reasoning is that although I think Backup exec is quite good everything is backed up to tape overnight and the backup doesn't allow for quick recovery of any server systems. If we want to recover a server I would have to firstly install the OS again and then restore all the system data from tape (as I understand it) as well as get exactly the same hardware in the event of a hardware failure.

If I have True image installed I can back up the entire systems as images reasonably quickly, restore them quickly and also restore them to dissimilar hardware (using the universal restore features) when needed. This would also help in the case of patching as I could take a snapshot just before the process and if anything went wrong then I could restore the working version quickly.

Any ideas or suggestions are very welcome.

 

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I used to use (for clients) a mix of Backup Exec and online with BackupDirect.net (the latter provide very good restore facilities and you can set how much and how often you want restore points - daily, weekly etc)

 

We try to use Acronis on new installs for the exact reasons you list mate. It costs more than back-up exec, but then offers more. The back-up time is also far speedier when used with an RD1000 for example.

 

While that side of things is not my problem, the man in the work uses amanda by zmanda although I think he wrote some scripts himself for rapid deployment to VMs if the physical box dies

 

Has anyone tried or currently use the Symantec System Recovery?

Just wondering if this is also worth looking at as it seems to be very much the same as Acronis True Image in its functions. The plus point is that we already have Symantec Backup Exec.

 

Possible little direct help to you nugget, but thought I'd chime up about using Acronis. We've got about 8 different types of laptops and I was tasked with creating an image of XP or Vista for each one. I loaded True Image onto a PC, created the boot disc and then used the same boot disc (it does look rather battered now though) to create images for each laptop - I've deployed must be 100 now in the last few months and each take about 10/15 mins to restore from an external USB harddrive.

Whether its as simple for servers I don't know - sorry.

 

And to add, we use NTBackup for our 2000/2003 boxes and Arcserve for our NT4 boxes both onto DATs and DDS4 tapes respectively.

 

I do the same thing too with the laptops and desktops. I had to get a recent version of Acronis as the older version had problems with SATA drives. I also tested the new version of Ghost (13 or 14) and I have to say that although it was very good years ago, it's fantastic now. Very easy to use and also very fast.

A good friend of mine told to go with Symantec. I've actually downloaded the trial versions of Symantec System Recovery to put them on some virtual machines and try it out. I'm actually quite excited about doing this (more than anything in the last 12 months or so). I guess this makes me a sad git then.

 

yes. yes it does.

But let us know how you get one, I'm sat here wondering about better options than just using backup exec myself!

 

Well, I played around a bit (Symantec BESR) with it over the weekend and it looks like we'll be going for this option. Looks good.

We also had a company in yesterday to give a small presentation on Sharepoint and it looks like we might be doing a sharepoint 2010 deployment later this year.

 

Hey mate,

BESR is fantastic product, the 2010 version has just been released and before I moved I upgrade all the servers to that version. It's ridiculously easy to restore an entire server with it, however for anything other than C: Drives it really isn't practical.

We had 3 Months worth of weekly full and incremental backups that overwrote each other on an External Hard Drive, and that never failed us.

Use a mixture of Backup Exec and BESR and you will be sorted, BE onto a tape drive, BESR onto a External HDD.

 

That's exactly what I plan to do.

Thanks for the info.

 

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