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Would WHS work for me? Small lab needing automatic backup

S

sprtfan

Senior member
I work in a small lab at a University. We have 5-7 computers that would be nice to have automaticly backed up to a server. I would also like to have specific folders backed up to something redundant like Raid 5.
I have server 2003 right now set up with Raid 5 and use synctoy to move data folders over to it on a daily basis. I do not currently have it set up to back up disk images of the computers on the network though. Server 2003 also has a log in server set up on it but we have not really used it and I doubt that we will. I'm guessing that WHS does not have this ability?
I also was not sure on how WHS backed up folders. Would it be similar to synctoy with different options like Synchronize, Echo, Subscribe, Contribute?

Thanks
 
I'm not familiar with Synctoys, but WHS will make a back up of your machines on the network, and then you can have WHS make back ups of the information that is in the storage pool.

If you have a system that works, I persoanlly wouldn't change it.
 
WHS is far superior if you want to be able to restore damaged Windows desktops. It does full image-based backups of up to ten client PCs. Backups are daily and automatic and are managed automatically. You can restore a single file or an entire disk or an entire PC with a couple of mouse clicks.

If you don't want to buy additiional hardware, you can put WHS into a Virtual Server or VMWare virtual machine on your Server 2003 and give it a separate hard drive for the OS and backups. WHS uses basically zero CPU time on my office's Server 2008 Hyper-V server.
 
Thanks for the info, putting it on a Virtual Server would be a good way to test it out and see how we like it. I'll run it past one of the IT guys and give it a try. If this works out, we wasted a lot of money building they 2003 server last year and should have gone with WHS for the start. We could have built a whole system for the cost of the server board and raid card.
 
Originally posted by: sprtfan
If this work out, we wasted a lot of money building they 2003 server last year and should have gone with WHS for the start. We cuuld have built a whole system for the cost of the server board and raid card.
Click to expand...
Probably. If all you need is file sharing and automated backups and don't need more than ten users or Active Directory, then WHS is the way to go.
 
Originally posted by: RebateMonger
Originally posted by: sprtfan
If this work out, we wasted a lot of money building they 2003 server last year and should have gone with WHS for the start. We cuuld have built a whole system for the cost of the server board and raid card.
Click to expand...
Probably. If all you need is file sharing and automated backups and don't need more than ten users or Active Directory, then WHS is the way to go.
Click to expand...

Yeah, when it comes to backup, it really is a brilliant piece of software.

The backup system is the best of both worlds when it comes to image and/or file backup. You can have both at the same time, with no drawbacks. The same backup system that can get your PC back up and running also painlessly backs up all your files each night, and you can keep the backups as long as you like.

In the past few days, WHS has saved my ass several times:

Tried to upgrade Win 7 versions on my laptop - didnt work to well. Just popped in the restore CD, connected an ethernet cable, clicked through a few painfully obvious steps, and 20 minutes later it was back up and running.

Just upgraded to a SSD in my desktop - used WHS to "restore" to the new drive, worked like a charm.

Decided to roll back to vista on my HTPC, as Win 7 was too buggy for me right now - again, 20 minutes later, it was back exactly as I had it before.

And I had a very important file corrupted due to an untimely power outage - just mounted an older backup through the console, and picked the file right out, just as I had left it.

And it manages to somehow squeeze three months of backups for 3 wildly different PCs into 100GB, which is several times less than it would take if I did it all manually, not to mention it required practically zero effort on my part.

For backup, I cant recommend it enough.
 
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