ghosting server for quick recovery???

mgworekmgworek
edited July 2005 in Science & Tech
I have a boss who isnt the greatest when it comes to IT.

I am going to be setting up their domain and exchange server, its been down for a few years since their last crash.

If it crashes again, he wants it up in like an hour.

I figured what I could do for him is tell him I will do nightly backups and once a week, I will ghost the machine to another set of disks so all i have to do is switch out the disks and if he can handle the time, i will do a restore from the night before.

I was thinking I could just ghost from one set of raid drives to another. make sure both raids are the same size, same disks and everything.

How does that sound?

Comments

  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited July 2005
    What raided drives?

    Your certainly not running raid-0 are you?

    Tex
  • tophericetopherice Oak Ridge, TN
    edited July 2005
    So your intent is a weekly Full backup and nightly differential or incremental backup? What's your current backup software solution? Do you have Veritas NetBackup,BackupExec, ARCserve, DLT or SAN. Also, what are your Domain and Exchange server version, do you use AD?
  • mgworekmgworek
    edited July 2005
    Right now, we are using Backup Exec 8.6 to do a nightly full backup. We have small business server 2000, that does use active directory even though it toast. I have only been here a few weeks and need to rebuild the domain. I am hoping to get them to upgrade to SMB 2003 and am trying to figure out the best backup solution for then.
    topherice wrote:
    So your intent is a weekly Full backup and nightly differential or incremental backup? What's your current backup software solution? Do you have Veritas NetBackup,BackupExec, ARCserve, DLT or SAN. Also, what are your Domain and Exchange server version, do you use AD?
  • mgworekmgworek
    edited July 2005
    I am not sure, I have not had to reboot the box yet but I will try to figure out. I dont think it is raid 0.
    Tex wrote:
    What raided drives?

    Your certainly not running raid-0 are you?

    Tex
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited July 2005
    1. make your OS drives mirrored.
    2. Ghost is crap. Use Acronis
    3. SBServer, Are you using this server for multiple tasks? IE Exchange, domain controller, file server?
    4. Get a second machine in place as a fail over controller and use replication as your first line of redundancy. You should always have a second controller that is nightly replicated to. Then you rely on your mirrored drives, drive images, etc.
  • mgworekmgworek
    edited July 2005
    I have not heard of Acronis, will look into it. I've used ghost and drive image for years for desktops and some server backups.

    We have two of the same servers. I want one for our domain controller and one for our file server/backup controller.

    Our SBServer is nothing more then a file server right now, AD is crashed on it, but once I rebuild their domain, it will be a domain controller, Exchancge, DHCP, and DNS.

    Thanx for the info, will put that down on paper.
    Gobbles wrote:
    1. make your OS drives mirrored.
    2. Ghost is crap. Use Acronis
    3. SBServer, Are you using this server for multiple tasks? IE Exchange, domain controller, file server?
    4. Get a second machine in place as a fail over controller and use replication as your first line of redundancy. You should always have a second controller that is nightly replicated to. Then you rely on your mirrored drives, drive images, etc.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited July 2005
    Acronis TrueImage is great.
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