Re: Staged Backup Best Practices

Tech-Archive recommends: Fix windows errors by optimizing your registry

From: MTBoxTech (support_at_mtboxcomputers.com)
Date: 11/30/04 

Date: 29 Nov 2004 18:20:21 -0800

I probably have more questions than can be addressed here, so I will
try to make this short. SBS'03 tops out at 75 users, and you are
starting with 50 users. If you don't expect to grow to 75 users within
the next 2-3 years, you should be okay.
Depending on what you are using the server for (file services only,
web-hosting, exchange, etc.), depends on the specs. If you are doing
exchange and F&P sharing, increase the RAM to at least 3 Gbytes, but I
would opt for 4. Also, you should determine now how much mailbox space
you are going to allow, how much shared data you currently have and may
need space for, and also how much personal space you are going to allow
your users. For 50 users, the space doesn't seem like very much. The
dual-processors should suite you nicely, especially if you will be
doing much SQL.

As for the backup plan, the idea is a slick one, and I've used it with
great success before. I supported a larger company with roughly 200
internal users and 75 remote users (NOT an SBS shop). We deployed a
very similar backup solution. We had a dedicated backup server with an
Promise Technology storage cabinet. The storage cabinet housed 8 - 120
Gbyte IDE drives, but had a SCSI backplane for connectivity to the
server. During the night all data (NOT SQL or Exchange, which cannot
be backed up to HDD) was backed-up (copied) to the storage cabinet.
Then, during the day the storage cabinet was backed up to tape. This
provided excellent redundancy, and also made the normal "oops, I didn't
mean to delete that file from the network" an non-issue. File recovery
never took more than a minute or so since the storage cabinet housed
the complete files.

As for your last question, I have never used SBS'03 in a 50-user
environment. The most users I've had on SBS is 25.
Hope that helps.

-TK
M/T Box Computers