Backing up SIMS with Windows Server 2008 Backup

[mrforgetful]

At the moment we use BackupAssist to backup our SIMS installation but the server that does this is a bit flaky.

We recently moved SIMS onto a new MS Windows Server 2008 installation and I was thinking of using the inbuilt backup software in that to do the backup to a locally attached drive to remove every night.

Does anyone know if the inbuilt backup stuff would backup everything alright? I'd just be checking the 'Backup Everything on this Server' option.

We use it on our DCs and File Servers with no issues.

[matt40k]

Look at using dbAttach to create a backup of the SIMS database. Also get it to backup DMS, then you just need to backup the database backups, the backup of DMS and the SIMS directory.

[mrforgetful]

I was just wondering if running a simple complete backup with Windows Backup in Server 2008 would get everything I needed.

[sahmeepee]

It may well do it, but Capita recommend using dbattach as it runs some other stuff as part of the backup process I think. I forget the details but it's something to do with how they store the SIMS user accounts in the master database. They may not support you for free if your backup fails to restore properly and you've not followed their published guidance so I wouldn't like to chance it.

For my nightly backup: I delete the old backup, run the command below, 7zip the resulting file and then back that up along with all the other gubbins under s:\sims and the docstorage.

DBAttach /Server=YOURSIMSSERVER\sims2005 /Database=SIMS /USER=SA /PASSWORD=YOURSAPASSWORD /AUTO /BACKUP /PATH="F:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL\Backup\RemoteBackup\SIMS-DB-nightly.bak"

As a side note, if you use FMS you should now be backing it up at the same times as you back up SIMS. It uses a different dbattach.exe.