Re: Backup best practices...
- From: Duncan McC <hard@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2008 14:28:03 +1300
In article <D8F85088-FE18-414C-8DB9-809BB1740A08@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
rosewood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx says...
It was a rant and I didn't expect it from an MVP.
Not a single one of my customers would be oob if there server was down for a
week. First off, the hardware they have wouldn't allow that to happen w/o a
total catastrophe and I've yet to have that happen b/c I do things like RAID
to keep that from happening. Worst case scenario for each of my customers
if the server were to sit off for a week: They would use their offline files
on their workstations, outlook would be in an offline mode and start pulling
from the backup remote pop3 accounts (that we keep for when COX or SBC
decides to kill internet for awhile), internet would continue to work as
every one of my customers is setup with a router that handles the
connection/firewall. Printing is all direct to the printers and each office
still has an old fax machine plugged in for outgoing faxes that would then
be used for incoming faxes. About a year and a half ago, a COX tech spilled
his latte on one of my customer's servers while I was in Dallas. The
customer of mine didn't call b/c he knew he was in Dallas but also because
he knew we had systems in place to keep everything going.
The point of my question was to make sure I'm on the right track, not that I
don't even have a train to ride on. Maybe you have enough time to break
stuff just to see how you can fix it, but I stay a bit busier than that
(which is why I build stuff not to break, 12 years I've been working with
PCs and quality and care do go a long way. Yes, freak things happen but
come on now).
I've read many a horror story from techs who have used NTbackup "the right
way" and still find that IIS didn't restore properly, or there is some goofy
mailbox issue with exchange. This is the type of stuff I'm trying to learn
about now before I do anything on my server, which is basically exactly what
you want me to do.
Kerry, you are one of the most helpful MVPs here and quite frankly SBS2003
wouldn't be the product it is if it weren't for the help of MVPs like you
and the others.
Thanks for your reply. Even if it was a rant, it showed you care.
"Kerry Brown" <kerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx*a*m> wrote in message
news:0D678ADF-9875-437E-BE53-8B395D27555F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Let's skip your personal server and concentrate on the production servers
for your customers. Like myself it sounds like you are a one person shop.
What will happen to your customers if you are on holiday in Hawaii and one
of their servers has a meltdown? You have done them a great disservice by
not having a tested, documented plan to restore their backup. They should
be able to do this without you present if possible. If you are like me
most of your customers are small business' who count on you to keep their
computers running. Some of them would suffer a serious financial blow if
their computers were unavailable for a week. How would you feel if one of
them went out of business because of you?
Now to get back to your system. Implement a backup system as close to your
customer's as is possible. Try several different bare metal restores until
you know how to do it without thinking. Try restoring to a new hard drive.
Try restoring to a new server. Try restoring from an old backup then
recovering current data from a newer backup. Once you can do this document
the process for your server. Now spend some time at your customer's sites
documenting how they would do it and give them the documentation.
I'm sorry if this sounds like a rant. Selling your customers a solution
without a tested, documented plan to restore their data is irresponsible.
It will come back to haunt you. Here is a link on using supported
procedures to backup and restore a SBS server.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=487736f8-f6f5-436d-a82d-0c8d66e2a634&displaylang=en
--
Kerry Brown
Microsoft MVP - Shell/User
http://www.vistahelp.ca/phpBB2/
"Rosewood" <rosewood@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:AE3F2BC8-4AD8-48E3-AC02-0F5D0518629C@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On my personal server, I received a SMART alert telling me that the
primary drive is failing. Because this server is my personal one, used
only by me for me, I never invested in really sexy hardware for it. If
the (sole) primary drive failed tomorrow, outlook would still have all of
my emails. My documents would still be available offline.
So my question is: What is the best practice for backup for SBS2003? For
me, a perfect backup would be one that is easy to restore and restores
everything. All settings for IIS, Exchange, the AD, etc. All the
mailboxes would come back, etc. and all w/ minimal effort (or at least
very well documented effort).
Like many folk here, I have adopted drive imaging as a second solution.
I have also tested backups using MS (full) backup, and in SBS 2003, it
actually works! (I think like many, we've been dissapointed with prior
MS Backup (restoring from ntbackup)).
That said, restoring from an MS Backup is still a very slow task,
compared with a drive imaging solution. It's great, I think anyway, to
have two backup strategies. And of course, restoring from an image, is
incredibly easy and more importantly *fast* (40 minutes on my last
Server install (Jan '08) compared to four hours (I think it was)
restoring the 'MS' way).
The most important bit as others have suggested, is to ensure you
actually do do the test restores, which I do as soon as the first disc
is installed (Windows 2003 Server is in). And I continue to do more
test restores as I get SBS 2003 fully installed (admitedly just using
Paragon Drive Backup (what I use for imaging)). I then do an MS restore
at the end of it all. OK... I might stuff something up along the way
during the setup, and end up starting again (4 to 5 hours down the
drain! :) - but it's definately well worth the effort at the end of the
day, and lot of peace of mind for me.
--
Duncan
.
- References:
- Re: Backup best practices...
- From: Kerry Brown
- Re: Backup best practices...
- From: Rosewood
- Re: Backup best practices...
- Prev by Date: Re: Exchange 2003 rejecting btconnect
- Next by Date: PPTP workaround for VPN?
- Previous by thread: Re: Backup best practices...
- Next by thread: Re: Backup best practices...
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
