Global backup policy to be made for a new sysadmin ... need advice 1

[Spearnorth]

Hi,

I'm a fresh "junior" (even if 34 )system administrator, and i just arrived in a company where there is no sysadmin (he left just before i arrived).

You can imagine the stress and the amount of things to digest about the overall way the company's system functions.

The existing backup solution needs to ben renewed and it seems the credits can be taken to do so.

Here we go :

- The existing :
- An AD DC on a server with a single hard disk
- 6 different servers all on RAID 5 disks
- D2DTP (system state nt backups arrvie on a file server
then saved on some DLT 40/80)
- Software : Brightstor Arcserve

- My opinion and the situation :
It's honestly hard to imagine a server crash these days, i don't know if things would get back to a normal state.
I'm currently addings secondary ADs, DHCPs, ... roles to other servers.
The DLT tapes are totally full and i just got the credits to change it for an LTO 3 tape drive, ordered it yesterday.
The servers are to be changed next year, so i have to take that in consideration in terms of investment.

In my opinion, i think we will stay in a D2D2T way of working for data. The size of the tapes will give me space to save many more things.

As there's enough place for only one, i think i'll ask for a secondary hard disk for the AD DC server to have it at least mirrored (cannot reach Raid5, it's a 2U thin server).

Here is the point where i hesitate :

Nest year will be the big deal, we're moving to a fully virtualized environment on two huge servers, with roles duplicated so that one can relay the other in case of damage.

But for now, if a crash occurs tomorrow, i'm lost. I have no experience about restoring crashed servers with the basic ntbackup tools.

I'm being quite tempted to " ghost " these servers and have images in a corner " in case of ". Even if a hardware failure would be of no use in such a case.

1) Do you think it is a good " emergency " idea (the ghost), or not at all considering my newbie situation as sysadmin in a totally new environment ?
Of course, i keep on with LTO saves for datas.

2) In the actual situation (system states saved in the D2D2T way), do you simply have to reinstall 2003 server, and then system state for the system to go back to the way it used to work, or is it a bit more complicated ?

3) i'm checking the Backup software suites (symantec, arcserve ...). There are lots of so called " agents " you can buy with, and the prices are incredibly high. Are the so useful to justify such prices (if i add AD, Exchange 2007 and so on agents ... wow !).

If you have advices, some disaster recovery schedules websites, it'll be great !

Thanks in advance, and have a good day

 

[Burgal]

1) Can't Ghost RAID, don't even try... you can corrupt the raid.

2) Won't delve too much in server rebuilding... Depends on the role/software used... Raid 5, and multipel AD controllers is a good start for now

3) BackupExec is my fav. You would only need SQL and Exchange agents. Don't need agents for AD unless you want to restore single objects. You can also get Symantec Backup Exec for Windows System Recovery Option to restore your server to disimilar hardware, so if you do crash you don't have to rebuild, just restore to fresh hardware.

 

[LWComputingMVP]

You might want to read over my backup page -

http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/backup.asp

That said, you might also consider Acronis Server products - it provides imaging style backups and works on servers. I tend to stay away from products made by symantec - Symantec is a fantastic marketing company... but they still haven't figured out how to create reliable software (worst part, they tend to butcher every product they acquire... used to love Drive Image - now that's essentially the engine behind ghost and I'm not such a fan anymore).