What backup software to use?

[ajbritton]

Originally Posted by Dos_Box

The problem with NTBackup is that it is pants. It will forget to do schedueled backups. Lose media from its' backup sets, and generally not do what it is supposeds to. I use Dantz (EMC) Retrospect 7.5, as it is simple, quick and its proactive backup system means that it will backup many jobs over a period of time rater than trying to do them all at once. SImply configure your jobs, make them proactive, and the system will do them as and when it can.

Interesting. We use NTBackup on upwards of 100 servers and although I could not say we never experience problems with backup, I can't remember a single one which was down to a problem with NTBackup itself.

Retrospect seems to say that it works by using incremental backups all the time (progressive). Does this mean that you never get another full backup? This would worry me greatly. What if the tape with the first backup fails? I've looked at the user guide on the website and it looks scarily complicated!!

Proactive backup does look clever, if it can't finish the backup in one go (during it's scheduled period of activity), it will carry on next time, but I suspect it's only really needed in complex setups with many servers.

I like the simplicity of NTBackup. It backs up files. It restores files. You can script it. It doesn't try to do lots of magic behind the scenes which, should it go wrong, leaves you covered in poo. The last thing you want when your server dies is to have to spend another day reading the manual, only to discover you forget to tick the box that says 'I might want to restore my data one day'! I suspect most schools based techs don't have the time to perform regular disaster recovery test runs.

[Dos_Box]

I have a tape array (Tandberg LTO2 Autoloader) and have a set jub for my weekly off site tapes, but the rest, mail, user areas and databases simply increment. My weekly is a full backup of everything on the incrementals.

[Joedetic]

Veritas Backup exec is what my school used (before i left and went to uni...not that they used it and stopped....you get the idea )

I always found that to be a nice userfriendly piece of software that did as it was told and made restoring and backing up files a relatively easy task in comparison to something like NT Backup.

I've used NT backup in the past and found it unstable if i try to perform a full system restore. The other thing was it didnt seem to restore the correct permissions. I had a backup of an old SIMS SQL 200 server and i restored some files to a folder as a backup-restore-test...it turns out that i then couldnt delete that folder once done...even as admin :S