2008 Server Backup

[Gazzak]

Got a 2008 Server running here where a few users store files. Does anyone know of a software that can pick selected files / folders and back them up to a different server or drive daily? Ideally that I can schedule too.
Windows backup on 2008 only does the whole disk, I need to select particular files and folders.

Would prefer real life experience rather than "I found this on Google" type reply if possible ;).

[74AD]

I've used symantec backup exec for a while and it's OK. Today I'm going to have a conference call with Novastor and get a trial of their software. They are offering good pricing right now for switching from backup exec...so I should have a report on that soon as well.

[Mobile PC]

Carbonite. 60.00 a year.

[emr]

wbadmin is what 2008 backup actually uses. You can script and schedule backups, and individual folders.
For example: wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:b: -include:c:\folderyouwanttobackup
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd767786.aspx and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742083%28WS.10%29.aspx

[Gazzak]

I've used symantec backup exec for a while and it's OK. Today I'm going to have a conference call with Novastor and get a trial of their software. They are offering good pricing right now for switching from backup exec...so I should have a report on that soon as well.

Thanks AD but a bit expensive for our needs. Would be interested to hear what you think of Novastor.


Carbonite. 60.00 a year.

All cloud? I think our IT would break my b*lls if I took over the outside line.


wbadmin is what 2008 backup actually uses. You can script and schedule backups, and individual folders.
For example: wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:b: -include:c:\folderyouwanttobackup
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dd767786.aspx and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc742083%28WS.10%29.aspx

Sounds like a plan. Can I somehow get that into s script that can be scheduled to run every other night?

[74AD]

you can also just robocopy stuff too. I do all our nas and external hard drive backups using robocopy

[Gazzak]

you can also just robocopy stuff too. I do all our nas and external hard drive backups using robocopy

Will Robocopy also copy files with specific user rights on them?

[74AD]

Will Robocopy also copy files with specific user rights on them?
yes. I believe the switch is /SEC to retain the NTFS security permissions. I don't use that switch but I have heard that it works as anticipated. there's lots of robocopy documentation on the interwebs.

[Webhead]

This is a great topic because it's something I'm working on too. I have 2 main servers that used to be on 2003. Now one is on 2008 R2 and the other is on 2012 R2. I've been experimenting with different things but haven't found a good solution yet. The wbadmin thing sounds interesting. I'm just clicking on the GUI icon at the moment creating a backup of the whole drive. But it's overkill and actually fails too often. Now I'm trying this one called "fdisk" which seems pretty good.

[Gazzak]

Thanks for the info chaps, I'll be having a good play tomorrow.

[Webhead]

I stumbled across something today that might be a great solution. Maybe you guys have already tried this?

It's this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

So I have my server with a large USB drive attached. My backup will be to simply run this and make VHDX files out of the physical drives. It would just run overnight maybe once a week. or I guess I could even schedule it to go nightly. Then for disaster recovery all you'd need to do is mount the VHDX file.

Anyway, I'm running this now. Gonna see how it goes and I'll post back if it works out.

EDIT:
Nevermind. Just after I finished posting this I turned around and it crashed. But I think it crashed because there's something wrong with my server and not because of this method of disk to vhd. So it still might be worth a try.

EDIT2:
Trying the same thing but with VMWare Converter instead. Seems to be working so far.

[CeeBee]

Making virtual drives is extremely inefficient, especially if not too much data changes. Imagine making a new 1TB image for 1MB of new files.
As a side note newer backups (Win7+) are made as VHD files and can be mounted directly in the OS (in the disk management console).

[Webhead]

You're right. It also isn't designed to be a backup software. Can't schedule it, can't do incrementals, etc. But I still want to try it. If it can run overnight and the server failed and all I needed to do was mount virtual drive to recover data, then I want to see how it works out.

[CeeBee]

It can do incrementals and can be scheduled, just not very straightforward. Worst downside IMHO is the lack of alerts, you won't know it failed unlessyou check it or know how to write a script to check the event logs and send notifications.

[Webhead]

It can do incrementals and can be scheduled, just not very straightforward. Worst downside IMHO is the lack of alerts, you won't know it failed unlessyou check it or know how to write a script to check the event logs and send notifications.

So I was looking into this more over the weekend and now I'm thinking that maybe all my servers should run on VMWare vSphere Hypervisor. Then Acronis makes software to back that up. That seems like a great way to do this. I've setup an ESXi server in the past. Thinking of doing that again. That way i could literally clone one computer that contains all my servers (in theory). Which would be really cool for backing up.

[Gazzak]

Update: Have been testing and messing about with Robocopy and it does exactly what I want. It's taken a while to get it working as I want and scheduled at the right intervals but it works great and most importantly it's free.

Cheers.

[74AD]

Update: Have been testing and messing about with Robocopy and it does exactly what I want. It's taken a while to get it working as I want and scheduled at the right intervals but it works great and most importantly it's free.

Cheers.

nice. I use it a lot at work as piece in our backup strategy. It's quite a handy little tool (though it does have a little bit of a learning curve to get it setup just right for your needs)

[CeeBee]

nice. I use it a lot at work as piece in our backup strategy. It's quite a handy little tool (though it does have a little bit of a learning curve to get it setup just right for your needs)
Have you looked into using wbadmin?

[3fingersalute]

We used Cobian backup (http://www.cobiansoft.com/cobianbackup.htm) at the last place I worked. It's open source (free!) and works really well.

[Webhead]

Awesome. Maybe I need to give robocopy a try. Sounds like that's the way to do it.