Backup Strategy

Question

I have just joined a company with Server 2003 Small Business Server. The company contains only an handful of staff and needs a backup system.

I would like to restore a tape backup (including system state, Exchange server, etc) to a second server. The aim is to have a verified set of backups and be able to swap the servers if necessary.

Am I right in thinking that the second server could not be on the SBS network?

Answer 1

you have a couple of options with SBS, you can have additional servers in the SBS domain such as win2003 servers. You can only have a additional SBS server on the same domain for a limit of seven days, this is for migration situations.

In you situation I would have a additional win2003 server connected to the domain to act as a backup domain controller, then if your SBS systems goes down you can still do Active directory auth. and access any resources still on your network.

We create a base acronis image of the SBS server, then if anything goes wrong you restore the acronis image and then apply the backup file (We use NTBackup provided in SBS) to bring you up to date. using the combination of acronis and backups cuts down the time to recover significantly.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Whatever method you choose, be sure to TEST the restore process using the actual backup media you keep on site.