Backing Up System State

[mrforgetful]

We are very short on backup space so I need to trim it down.

This is for disaster recovery only, so if the school burns down or something.

The data I'm wanting to backup is the Active Directory/Group Policies etc. so if the school burns down and I get a new server in I can restore this Domain Information.


Is it necessary to back up the System State of all my Servers?
Or do I only need one?
Or do I need my DC and my Mail Server's System State?

Thanks.

[ChrisH]

Supposedly you could get away with backing up one DC but sods law states that there will be something wrong with that backup. If your running out of space (im guessing some sort of tape drive) try and get some external Hard Drives in for backing up certain stuff like user data etc.

[bossman]

Why not buy a Buffalo NAS for around 1k, at 2Tb its a cheap solution to your
backup problems.

[mrforgetful]

I have to take it Off Site.

[bossman]

Well then backup your NAS or Server directly to a usb 2.0 portable harddrive then take off site (simple but effective) I am offering a simple solution to your problem.

[apeo]

BTW if you dont have a portable HDD what you could make a usb portable HDD with eide drives if you buy a usb caddy.. not the quickest way to do things but can be a cheap and portable HDD.

[mrforgetful]

Well then backup your NAS or Server directly to a usb 2.0 portable harddrive then take off site (simple but effective) I am offering a simple solution to your problem.

This is what I was planning to do but I'm not sure if the data transfer rate will be fast enough?

I was going to buy a 500Gb external drive for each of my main 5 servers, a 1Tb one for our storage server and another maybe 250Gb to backup the SIMS database.

I would have 3 sets, two weekly's and a term and would set them running from Friday evening to they had all weekend to transfer the data.

Does this sound feasable?

[plexer]

Why do you have to take it off site?

Ben

[webman]

I'd have thought one USB2 disk for each server should suffice.

[ChrisH]

USB2 is a hell of a lot faster than 1.1 remember I personally use external SATA caddies that connect through a back plate connector on the machine.

[ChrisH]

Why do you have to take it off site?

Ben

Off site backup disaster recovery etc maybe?

[plexer]

Dunno that's why I asked.

I'd be very wary of just taking schools data offiste personally.

Ben

[ChrisH]

Dunno that's why I asked.

I'd be very wary of just taking schools data offiste personally.

Ben

I have a vicious cocker spaniel and 2 cats protecting mine I see your point though. Maybe school should buy us all safes ?

[mrforgetful]

plexer - Offsite incase of fire. Data is RAID'd then backed up to another server onsite and we use shadow copies for restoring mainly so data is all nice and safe onsite, but that's useless if I come to work to find it burnt to the ground, then it's a P45 lol.


ChrisH and Webman - I was looking at some external USB2 drives and then got looking at eSATA. These are them:

eSATA: http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...facturer_id=15

USB2: http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...ufacturer_id=0

I don't have an eSATA connection on my server's though, any idea how I can add them?

[apeo]

I have a vicious cocker spaniel and 2 cats protecting mine I see your point though. Maybe school should buy us all safes ?