Hello, I am fresh into the field of Network Administration(1 month). I work for a company that has one DC that is on a nightly backup plan for all important files(engineering, databases, etc). These files are backed up to an external hard drive that is attatched localy to that server. We also have a file server that these files are backed up to as well.I also know that once a week a second external hardrive is backed up and taken off site.All important data are backed up on a nightly basis. I am 75% comfortable with this backup plan for this important data, however being new to this I am completly petrified that one day the server which is running Raid 5 will crash and I will be left with having to reinstall and reload data. We are about 2-3 months away from getting a tape drive backup that we will use in place of the external attatched to server. What I want to be able to do is backup the server nightly so that if it crashed all I would have to do is reimage the drive with the backed up image and not have lost any data or have any downtime(ie:Have a complete image of the OS and all settings and all data). The Raided harddrives are 60g. As I said I am new to this only been out of school a month, so I guess I am looking for some guidance into this. I know we should have a backup DC and I mentioned this, the boss said no way. So is it possible for me to do this on a nightly basis? I greatly appreciate any help offered. "Listen.....you smell that?" Dan Ackroyd Ghost Busters

Since you are looking to do disaster recovery, specifally bare-metal recovery, I would get a software package that is made for that like Retrospect (my preference) or BackupExec. Also, stay away from tapes. Besides being EXTREMELY expensive, they are very slow, and wear out in less than a year. Get a few 300GB external USB hard drives, and you'll be fine. I like to keep redundant backup sets, and using tape, making those can take MORE than all night, and can be impossible if you don't have an auto-loader. Kerry -- /bb{^b{2}/ that is the Question

Since you server has a RAID 5, you don't need to worry much about HDD failure. If one fails, you change the bad drive out for a good one, the RAID rebuilds, life goes on without any downtime. The chances of more than one drive failing at the same moment in time are slim. Your biggest worries are OS problems causing your system to go down, or a motherboard or some other important hardware failing. This is where good backups make the biggest difference. Every backup medium has it's own drawbacks. Yes, tapes can be pricey. Yes they do require regular replacement. Hard drives fail and also require regular replacement. Granted they may not require replacement as often as tapes, but they do still need to be replaced from time to time. So it's kind of a 6 of one, half a dozen of the other situation. Everyone has their own personal favorites and if you ask 10 different admins, you'll likely get 10 different answers. One thing I do know is tapes are a LOT easier to carry out of the building for your offiste backups (a must in any case). Also, if you accidentally drop a tape, you don't have to worry about it being no good anymore. With hard drives, if you drop it, it's entirely possible the drive is no longer any good. Regardless, since you're buying a tape backup device, let's talk tape backups. The following article on Microsofts Knowledge base details how to setup backups with a tape backup device using the built in ntbackup". Bookmark this page, it's worth keeping this handy. My personal preference is the "unmanaged" backup sets. Managed requires the tapes to be labeled and if you have the wrong tape in the drive, the backup won't run. Unamanaged backups don't care about labels and write to whatever tape is in the drive. This is handy in the case of long weekends and other holidays. To use the unmanaged backup set you will want to run it out of a batchfile. This is handy as it allows you to invoke the scheduled backup automatically and you can add a command in the same batchfile to copy the backup file to your file server. This will all run as one automated process. Yes, I know you can go out and spend money on 3'd party backup software but the big question is do you really need it? For most small networks the answer is a flat NO. Not once you're familiar with using ntbackup. Also, if you get big enough tapes to hold you backup (we use 500 GB tapes where I work) you don't need expensive autoloaders. Redundant backups are nice but not necessary. With you backing up to tape as well as to a file server you will already have redundant backups. My advice, take the tapes offsite and keep them offsite. Bring one tape each day for that nights backup. This way should the business burn to the ground, you still have all the data safely offsite. Should the DC fail, you can restore from either the file server or the tape, your choice. Personally, I think you really need to stress the importance of a second DC for redundancy to your boss. In the case of redundant DC's your domain keeps functioning if one DC fails....ie: no downtime while you rebuild the failed DC.

So, you don't want to spend a lot of money on 3rd-party backup software, but you're willing to install and maintain a second DC? And I would have to disagree that dropping a tape does no harm to the tape (I've witnessed this personally). The REAL kicker in this debate is backup window. Even with the newest SDLT or LTO tapes, you still only get about one hundred MB per MINUTE backup rate. With HD, I AVERAGE over 1200 MB per minute. This also really adds up when the server is down, and you have to get it up NOW. Also, multiple drive failures in a RAID-5 scenario can be somewhat common, depending on the controller and situation. I've had one drive go out, and had it "knock off" another drive doing so. Forcing the drive back into the array worked fine, but no RAID solution is 100%. I agree that a second DC would be a very good idea, but it may be overkill for this situation. You'll have to decide that for yourself. Kerry ------------------------ /bb{^b{2}/ that is the Question

Thank you both very much. "Listen.....you smell that?" Dan Ackroyd Ghost Busters