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Windows SBS 2008 ... what do you use for a backup solution??

G

GCS

Diamond Member
So we are in the process of migrating to Windows SBS 2008 and I would like to hear what you guys use as backup software/solution.

We are coming from a Windows XP Pro server that we ran Acronis True Image on every night backing up the system to an External USB drive. That drive was swapped each day and carried off-site.

I know there is Acronis for Windows Server but that thing is $800. We would like to avoid paying that much.

Could I simply keep the old server running with Acronis doing the same backup but back up the Windows SBS machine over the network instead of backing up itself?

Looking for your suggestions.

TIA

Greg


EDIT - Added our setup

HP Proliant ml110 G6 server
250gb drive with SBS 2008
8gb DDR3 Ram
Perc 6i RAID 5 card
4 x 1TB WD Enterprise Drives

Raid Array contains our program drives and data drives.
 
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Rather than a backup I would probably just add more drives to the raid array in a mirroring configuration. Then someone can take the drive home and it contain all the data without having to run anything. It works when you don't have a lot of computers to manage.
 
Just use the free NT Backup... you can always use windows storage server 2008 instead of SBS...

or esx 4.0 the box, use vranger and backup the VM remotely to other storage medium
 
We are using SBS 2008 because we need Exchange.


Adding more drives to the server is not possible unless it is done externally. HP ml110 only holds 4 drives. I have 5 in it by moving the OS drive to the last open 5 1/4" bay in the case.

If Acronis worked with it I would stick with the same plan I have in place now but $800 for the Server version is a waste for us.

Greg
 
I don't have any SBS 2008 servers in production use yet, so I can't speak from a daily-use basis.

In theory, at least, the built-in Windows Server Backup (WSB) that's part of SBS 2008 isn't that bad. That's what I use on my own Hyper-V server. I've also used BackupAssist http://backupassist.com on top of the built in WSB. It adds some nice features that make it approach the features of the $1000 packages. It'll also do some things (like Rsync across a VPN) that other packages won't do.

WSB does full image backups and, supposedly, is capable of doing dissimilar-hardware restores. I say "supposedly" because I haven't had much luck with dissimilar-hardware restores with it so far.

I haven't used the new 2008 version yet, but I've always liked the bare-metal and dissimilar-hardware restore capability of StorageCraft's ShadowProtect Server. The older version (which I have used) can do miracles in restoring to different hardware in case of a major hardware failure. Their SBS version works the same as their full version, but is priced at $500.
 
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Additional question on this topic.

Is there a suitable program I can install on another machine (say a Windows 7 or XP machine) and do the backups from that machine for the data stored on the raid array in the SBS2008 machine?

I realize I would not get the OS drive but I could back that up with the Backup built into SBS.

I thought I could pull this off with Acronis but it appears I can't access the network drives from Acronis (yes I can access the SBS network drives on the machine in general and I am logged into the domain).

Dumb question - would WHS work for this purpose? I have the software already and a spare machine no problem. In theory couldn't I use WHS to backup the data on the SBS 2008 machine as well as backup the workstations (7 of them) or is WHS limited in number?

Greg
 
GCS said:
So we are in the process of migrating to Windows SBS 2008 and I would like to hear what you guys use as backup software/solution.

We are coming from a Windows XP Pro server that we ran Acronis True Image on every night backing up the system to an External USB drive. That drive was swapped each day and carried off-site.

I know there is Acronis for Windows Server but that thing is $800. We would like to avoid paying that much.

Could I simply keep the old server running with Acronis doing the same backup but back up the Windows SBS machine over the network instead of backing up itself?

Looking for your suggestions.

TIA

Greg


EDIT - Added our setup

HP Proliant ml110 G6 server
250gb drive with SBS 2008
8gb DDR3 Ram
Perc 6i RAID 5 card
4 x 1TB WD Enterprise Drives

Raid Array contains our program drives and data drives.
Click to expand...


checkout symantec backup exec system recovery 2010 small business server edition. It starts out at around $580 for 1 license. I played around with a trial edition for my server 2008 r2. And it works pretty good I think.
 
GCS said:
Dumb question - would WHS work for this purpose? I have the software already and a spare machine no problem. In theory couldn't I use WHS to backup the data on the SBS 2008 machine as well as backup the workstations (7 of them) or is WHS limited in number?
Click to expand...
I've backed up and restored Server 2003 systems from WHS backups. But my last attempt to restore a WHS Server 2008 R2 backup didn't quite work right. As far as I can see, I think that the DATA gets backed up OK.

WHS can automatically back up ten client computers on a daily basis.
 
Well I am thinking of having WHS backup just the data drives only and not worry about the SBS2008 OS Drive -- I'll back that up using the built-in backup. My data is the most important thing to me anyway.

Perhaps I will throw together this extra machine I have here with WHS and run some tests to see if I like what I see.

If not I will probable move to the Storagecraft product or Symantec (not a huge fan of theirs though)

Thanks

Greg
 
GCS said:
If not I will probable move to the Storagecraft product or Symantec (not a huge fan of theirs though)
Click to expand...
Storagecraft has a good reputation among the folks I hang out with. It's fast and the ability to move to different hardware on restore is a great feature. The SBS-only version is $500.
 
I have been looking it over and like what I see except I have been reading a lot of comments lately on how it does not do a "full image" of the drive like Acronis does. I would think that would be a critical element for any good back up software.

Greg
 
GCS said:
I have been looking it over and like what I see except I have been reading a lot of comments lately on how it does not do a "full image" of the drive like Acronis does. I would think that would be a critical element for any good back up software.
Click to expand...
I don't know where that's coming from, but the whole purpose of Storagecraft's ShadowProtect Server is to be able to quickly restore an entire server from scratch, even on completely different hardware (new server, new RAID card, or a virtual machine).
 
Well my WHS project didn't work out so well. I have downloaded the trial of Shadowprotect and will give that a shot. If the "limited" version seems ok I will move up and ask for a full version evaluation and then purchase it if all seems to go ok after a few backup and restore sessions.

Greg
 
I never used SBS 2008 but I use Win 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. I assume the inbuilt Windows backup is the same so will put in my feedback.

Just last week I managed to get the 2008 inbuilt backup to work and it's quite good but can take some time - but then again I am backing up around 600 GB of data every night.

However, when I tried to configure it first time I really couldn't get it to work. I was trying to back up the system image and files to a NAS drive (Buffalo) and it was impossible to get it to work as it kept giving me errors in relation to (after googling the errors) to some directory structure being different.

So last week I just purchased a large USB drive and it's now working great and taking a backup every night. Did a test restore of some files and worked well and plan to try a system image test restore soon.

I am only using the inbuilt backup to backup the actual server so that if hardware fails I can just move to a new system asap (hopefully).

Apart from that I am also using a third-party backup product that I have it installed on 12 workstations that back up their changed files onto their server. Due to the nature of the work some users need to store files locally.

The third-party product i'm using is a relatively new product called Oops Backup from a company called Altaro (http://www.altaro.com). The reason I use Oops Backup instead of the inbuild Windows 7 Pro backup on the workstations is that it's a CDP solution for workstations and can detect file changes and back them up immediately to the NAS drive (which I ended up couldn't use for the server backup) . Its really sweet and some cool features that i didnt find in any other product. Oh and another plus is that it's so easy to use that users can restore the files themselves without having to call 🙂 That part I really value.

Anyway - hope i was of some help.

Joe
 
I haven't used SBS or 2008 R2 much, but with the original server 08, the backup utility works pretty well...however it does NOT play nice with network shares. Best to be used with USB or (more likely) esata external HDD's.


Not sure if R2 fixed this or not. Even more unsure with SBS.
 
Chapbass said:
I haven't used SBS or 2008 R2 much, but with the original server 08, the backup utility works pretty well...however it does NOT play nice with network shares. Best to be used with USB or (more likely) esata external HDD's.


Not sure if R2 fixed this or not. Even more unsure with SBS.
Click to expand...

Seems like you experienced my same issue with network shares and I used R2.
 
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