Back up domain controller / file server...

[dublin101]

Hi there all..happy new year!

we currently have one DC which also stores all of our files, which is a database store, and user home drives..........basically, i want to install a secondary domain controller, an exact mirror of the DC just in case the DC crashes...........so not just Active Directory, but also all of the data, licenses, etc.....

is there a replication way of doing this? suggestions appreciated.

regards,

 

[mrdenny]

Yes, use DFS to replicate all the user data from one server to the other.

What kind of databases are you talking about. If Access then DFS should be able to handle replicating the files. If SQL Server then you'll need to setup replication or log shipping from within SQL Server to copy the data to the second machine.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005) / MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[dublin101]

we are using pervasive sql......and the POS software runs on top of that.........

basically we want to have this DC/file server/etc backed up daily and kept as a backup, so if our one crashes, we can just use this one until other one is repaired.....

i was a bit curious about the share permissions, licensing, etc......

what do you think about running Symantec live state recovery every day...to completely replicate the other server???...or some other imaging package?.........

or would it just be better to spend time at the start and configure it to replicate, etc.

 

[mrdenny]

Personally I'd never run any Symantec product on a machine. But that's just me.

You'll need to contact Pervasive and see what kinds of replication there database supports. As well as the POS vendor.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005) / MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[dublin101]

pretty difficult with pervasive and the POS guys...small companies..........we basically need a failsafe system that can be back up and running within an hour.

so the idea of a backup server with an identical configuration, files, licensing, etc was an idea put forward by a boss,,,,,,and why not!..

so perhaps i'll just have to image the server on a regular basis and keep it in line waiting......

 

[58sniper]

I think the POS is going to be the biggest issue. Everything else can be configured for fault tolerance so that there is no (or VERY little) downtime. As MrDenny mentioned, DFS will help with most of the requirements. Having a secondary DC is always a good idea.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[Madrox]

You could use Acronis to image the server as often as you want. It takes about 10-20min to restore an image back to a box and your back to where your last image was at.

An example of what you could do:

- Image the server daily, say first thing in the AM...only takes a little bit and the box doesn't have to go down.

- If the box fails, fix the failure and restore the image.

- If the box is toast, get another box with similar stats and restore to that.

You could even restore to a PC for the short term while you acquire a server grade machine. I've done that before with Acronis.

Just an idea..

K

 

[dublin101]

yeh i've just got the acronis trial........

i'm a bit worried though how it will go on servers with scsi drives and raid configurations........will that make any real difference?

 

[Madrox]

not at all. we use it here all the time on boxes with scsi drives and different raid variations.

 

[dublin101]

thanks for that, i'm going to have to try it asap as our servers are very vulnerable at the moment..........are there any tricks i need to know about doing the universal restore option????

 

[gregmuir2]

How good as Acronis? I've inherited a Veritas BackupExec v10d environment. I've been futzing with this thing off and on for months now and the blighter never wants to work right. The only backups I fully trust right now are the ones I robocopy to my external drives. With our Veritas setup, we're trying to backup our main file store, exchange server, and several other servers. The idea is that we'll be able to do a full bare metal restore if things are screwed up. Veritas does not instill much confidence. The stupid thing will lose connection to the media set when doing backup to disk operations (as if it's thinking I need to put another tape in the disk drive for it to continue!) and other such foolishness.

From what I've read on the company forums, Veritas is a pooch that Symantec is in the middle of thoroughly screwing.

 

[gregmuir2]

flag

 

[Cstorms]

Just to give you a heads up we were having a bunch of issues restoring from dvd/cd's using acronis, it seems to have a serious problem with spanning images across disk. We were mostly successful when loading from cd to an external hdd and then loading the spanned images from there. This seems to be a pretty widespread issue, so i would recommend always having them loaded onto an external usb 2.0 (not sure it supports firewire). Our setup here for redundancy is using a completely seperate NAS drive and having to dc's that use dfs pointers to the storage array, so we just image whatever is on the actual servers and depend on our raid for our databases and such. Good luck!

 

[gregmuir2]

What if you just made the backups directly to the external disks, no fooling with DVD/CD's? Seems more sensible, less headches, and disks are CHEAP these days!

 

[dublin101]

gregmuir if you are using symantec, you need to use symantec backup exec SYSTEM recovery.......with restore anywhere option.

the one you mentioned is just a normal backup program.....

 

[gregmuir2]

So is that part of the BackupExec product or something different? I'd call Symantec to ask but their phone lines have been jammed since November(!?!?) because of their licensing fiasco. I hear version 11 of BackupExec bites tremendously.

 

[dublin101]

nah backup exec is about 1 grand max......

the SYSTEM recovery version is a bit different and I would htink it would be a total different version and costs about 1500 max...you can download a trial from the site................

 

[gregmuir2]

Ugh. Who comes up with the naming schemes on these products? Why even call it BackupExec if it's not part of BackupExec? It's like with Business Objects deciding to rename Crystal Reports. Rather than using a version number as name they're pronouncing the roman numerals. CRXI is not CR "11" but CR "ex-eye". And the next version of the software, the one you have to pay for, is CRXI R2. Huh? If you're not changing the version number then why am I getting charged?

Ok, calming down. So, assuming no brand loyalty, no giving a crud about this and that, what's the best full-system-backup tool, no fuss and bother? (I'm still annoyed this ain't the days of dos when you could just copy *.* and be done with it.)