Reusing old server as backup store

[LeMarchand]

Have recently inherited a site with a new server + VEEAM that is backing up to a "Backup" VM but nowhere else. Money is tight/non-existent, so I was considering bunging a few disks in the old server and at least copying the backups over to it (and moving it to the other end of the school!).

 

Currently Server 2003; not sure if there is scope to change Server OS, but could possibly use Win7 or 8 if the hardware will stand it. Could also go down the FreeNAS route.

 

Obviously a better offsite solution needs to be found, but does anyone have any thoughts on OS or another no-cost method to improve the current setup?

[synaesthesia]

Done that quite often, although now we're migrating most backups to dedicated NAS storage. Freenas will be a good solution IMO, it certainly won't be any worse than some off the shelf solutions (I'd rank a badly set up Freenas over and above anything by Bufallo any day of the week)

[dhicks]

does anyone have any thoughts on OS or another no-cost method to improve the current setup?

 

We're aiming to sync all user areas and file shares with Google Drive, so Drive will act both as a backup and somewhere where users can edit files if they want to. We'll also aim to have another file server syncing with Drive but also doing versioning, so there's always a way to get hold of a previous version.

[LeMarchand]

@dhicks sounds like a good plan for user data. I would sleep better if the school's entire data inc SIMS etc wasn't all one one physical box! (As it is at present).

[ColinP]

how about using an old pc doesn't need to be a server with a big HDD. create a share and point veeam towards it! If you have a failure on your hardware you will loose everything ATM

 

I would do this urgently