Hello All,

We are currently reviewing our backup policy and are considering buying R1Soft CDP Server (Thanks to recommendations on EduGeek

).

Our current setup is as follows:

3 Server 2003 STD servers
1 Ubuntu server
1 VLE

The Windows and Linux servers all backup to removable USB drives nightly. They are also backed up to a NAS box in another part of the school on a monthly basis.

The VLE can only be backed up by connecting to a samba share on the box, so we use one of the Server 2003 servers to act as an intermediary between the VLE and NAS box. This is done using standard NTBackup.

I'm wondering if anyone could answer the following questions?

1. If I understand correctly, the CDP Server backs up the other servers, using agents, to a network attached device (e.g. NAS). Does this mean the removable USB drives will become obsolete, or can you tell the servers running the agents to backup to a locally attached device?

2. We don't have access to install software on our VLE box so installing the agent will be out of the question. I guess we will have to continue using the intermediary setup or does anyone using CDP Server know of any features that would cater for this?

3. Has anyone actually had any experience of disaster recovery using CDP Server?

4. CDP Server sounds too good to be true so are there any downsides?

Any advice/comments would be much appreciated