Bare metal vs system state + files

[edutech4schools]

Primary school backup question.

 

We currently have off site backup which backs up system state and all the files, along with this I occasionally plug in a 1tb usb drive and run system state along with robocopy which copies any changed files over.

 

With my USB drive would I be better of doing a full 'bare metal' backup?

 

I was going to do this but have read that due to requiring the exact same hardware to restore a 'bare metal' backup it is better just to do system state and re-install the OS fresh.

 

Any thoughts?

[sparkeh]

Well having a bare metal restore is handy anyway if you need to restore the server onto the same hardware.

 

Personally I would do one of the following: 1) get hold of backup software that allows you to restore to different hardware, 2) virtualise, its worth it even for a single server in terms of simplified DR.

[edutech4schools]

If I do a bare metal backup and decide I do not want to restore using the bare metal restore, can I still access the system state and folder/files that have been created with the bare metal backup?

[jbunoomally]

Get system states *and* bare metal. Then you can easily do auth and non auth restored of DCs very quickly without having to worry about USN's etc from bare metal.

 

JB.

[edutech4schools]

Thanks

[edutech4schools]

Get system states *and* bare metal

Sorry for the basic question but never used bare metal backup.

 

When selecting bare metal backup, system state automatically gets ticked. Am I able to restore just the system state from this bare metal backup without doing a bare metal restore or do I need to do a separate system state backup?

[jbunoomally]

I would have a separate backup job with just the system states for a couple reasons

 

- you can never have too many backups, the more options available to you when it hits the fan, the better.

- you can keep a longer archive of system states to roll back to without using as much space compared to keeping the whole server image

- sometimes larger backup jobs fail, and if you have system state as part of this then there is risk of not having a good system state because the main job failed on some other files it couldn't backup.

 

JB