Re: Upgrading from SBS 2003 SP1 to R2, Backup Exec 11d or System Center Data Protection Manager 2007?

Serge,
I'm not trying to be rude or insensitive, but if you are the IT consultant for this customer, you seem to be very unfamiliar with Small Business Server as well as other products in the Small Business arena.

I'm going to provide some basic answers in line to your questions but these seem like rather odd questions for someone who is in the business of IT Consulting and who should be familiar with Small Business Server if you are going to take on customers who have this product.

See below

Regarding their 3 areas of concern
1. Backup - Given the number of servers you are talking about, you need a very sophisticated back up strategy. its not just about backing up SBS. Thats simple, you use the SBS backup wizard and let it back up the whole server every night to USB drives. But it can't backup your other servers. You may very well need Symantec's Enterprise Product with Active agents for SQL, etc. And you'll need large capacity separate storage for those back ups..possibly a separate SANs device or tape changer capability.

2. DR - Backup is a big part of DR. The two go hand in hand. Deciding how to approach their DR requirements depends on how long they can afford to be down, how readily replacement hardware can be made available, are all things that will affect the plan and approach. Server imaging might be one approach using products which can restore either to "real" hardware or to Virtual Servers.

3. Virtual Servers - Whether you use Microsofts products or VMWare, you need to decide what goal of virtualization is? Simply trying to reduce the actual # of servers and keep costs down? Having 1 or 2 very beefy VM servers each handling 2-3 guests can be much cheaper than 6 individual servers. Having VMServers as a DR option works too. Or you can do both.

I strongly suggest you consider partnering with another consultant who has more experience in a complex project like this. You will learn a lot in the process and you will look good to your customer because they will have the solution they are looking for.

--
Cris Hanna [SBS-MVP]
---------------------------
MVPs do not work for MS.
Please do not contact me directly regarding issues.


"serge" <sergea@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:10AC7E1A-BD38-40A1-B82A-5CDC6DB02A04@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello,

I have a number of questions while I prepare to setup R2.

1- In Server Management, Licensing I see:
Installed licenses: 5
Maximum usage: 10

Where do I find all the information on Licensing? Is there
something I am missing, I want to find out what are the 10
usages: servers, users? The subform is empty in License
Codes, Number of Licenses and Activation Date.
SBS comes with 5 built in client access licenses. Many third party programs wind up creating "accounts" when they are installed.
You should be able to look in AD Users and Computers and get a sense if some of the 3rd party programs they have are using up licenses, but the fact is that they need additional licenses
Licensing for SBS is all covered right here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/sbs/howtobuy/licensing.mspx


2- Currently the SBS has Veritas Backup Exec 10d installed.
The backup is being done to a USB driver. I am currently
doing research both on hardware and software.

Let's start with the network environment first.
The client have their main servers in a data center. They have
one SBS 2003 SP1 (the plan is to move it to R2), 1 separate
SQL 2005 Std Edition and there are 4-5 other servers which
are IIS servers, another SQL Server and some other servers.

This seems like an awful lot of servers for a relatively few workstations. You mention IIS servers. Hopefully they are not hosting their public website inside their SBS domain.!! And what do you hope to gain by upgrading their SBS server to R2?

Then the client has a dozen other computers (some servers,
MS virtual servers and the rest are workstations XP and Vista)
in other remote locations.

The network is properly setup, all 5-6 subnets are connected
properly and all seems to be functionning well through the
Internet and VPN connections.

I can't imagine why in the world there would be 5-6 subnets unless you are talking persistent VPNs between that many remote offices

The client is interested in 3 areas:
1- Backup
2- Disaster Recovery
3- Being able to create virtual servers (using VMWare or
MS Virtual Server) to copy production servers in order
to be able to use those newly created virtual servers for
testing purposes.

I've been reading the data*** on Veritas and it seems to have
a simple Disaster Recovery option. I called and asked what is
the difference between the DR option that comes with the SBS
version of Backup Exec vs the separate Veritas Disaster Recovery
Option application, they said the simple DR takes hours to restore
whereas the other product takes minuets. The simple product
backs up to tape-based whereas the SRO one backs up to disk.
I have read also that Veritas (not sure if the main product or only
the SRO) can backup/create VMware or Virtual Server images.


http://eval.symantec.com/mktginfo/enterprise/fact_sheets/ent-datasheet_bewsbs_11d_03-2007.en-us.pdf



What I've read so far about SCDPM, especially for SQL

backups is that it gives much more options when it comes

to restoring mainly. I can see a lot of options that I don't

believe Veritas offer.





What are you using? Do people like SCDPM? Is there a

document or an article where someone has written their

differences, the pros and cons of each, why choose one

over the other?



And for DR, what do people use to prepare and backup

their servers so in case of disaster, things are setup

for easy recovery? I looked at VMWare demo online

which is selling the notion that disaster recovery with

VMWare is much easier and quicker than other traditional

methods. However, I might be wrong, I would have to read more,

but with their solution, I am supposed to convert my physical

OSes into Virtual Servers then these virtual servers are setup

to be copied as DR images? Anyone knows?



http://www.vmware.com/solutions/continuity/disasterrecovery.html#



What are my options for DR? When i have remote offices, no

hardware yet, and the client is asking if there are affordable solutions

consisting of software and hardware for the three requirements.



I appreciate your feedback.



Thank you