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Thread: 2008 Server Backup

  1. #11
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    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/s.../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.
    Last edited by Webhead; 05-01-2014 at 10:43 PM.

  2. #12
    Senior Member CeeBee's Avatar
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    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).

  3. #13
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    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.
    Last edited by Webhead; 05-01-2014 at 11:18 PM.

  4. #14
    Senior Member CeeBee's Avatar
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    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.

  5. #15
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by CeeBee View Post
    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.

  6. #16
    Senior Member Gazzak's Avatar
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    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.

  7. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gazzak View Post
    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)

  8. #18
    Senior Member CeeBee's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by 74AD View Post
    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?

  9. #19
    forum fool 3fingersalute's Avatar
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    We used Cobian backup at the last place I worked. It's open source (free!) and works really well.
    "Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free." - Jim Morrison

  10. #20
    Senior Member Webhead's Avatar
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    Awesome. Maybe I need to give robocopy a try. Sounds like that's the way to do it.

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