What program use to make a system RAID5 disk copy to tape subsystem? 2

[grofaty]

Hi,

My server system uses RAID5 disk array and uses Windows 2003 Server operating system. I would like to copy whole disk (including partition definitions) to external media (tape subsystem), to have disaster recovery posibilities. This system is very important and in case of somekind of virus or disk failure it has to be running within 5 hours at maximum.

What is most appropriate program to do the job? Can someone post program name and/or method to do the job?

P.S. On my Windows XP system I am using "Norton Ghost". But this version does not recognizes disk with RAID array.

Thanks,
Grofaty

 

[patrick118]

Ghost doesn't have to now the raid system if you configured it in the bios as a logical drive it would be no problem.

But take a look at another tool from symantec.

Symantec LiveState™ Recovery Advanced Server

http://sea.symantec.com/content/product.cfm?productid=23

 

[bkuepers]

If your server is critical you should definately be using hardware RAID. If your using software RAID with windows server I'd be worried about it.

With that said there are lots of ways to back up the server.

you could do a disk or tape based backup with another windows 2003 server using NTBACKUP. It used Volume Shadow Copy Services by default so you should have open file issues.

I would recommend Veritas Backup Exec with IDR(Intelligent Disaster Recovery).

 

[grofaty]

bkuepers, I use hardware RAID!

patric118, I don't know do you mean with "bios as logical drive"!

I like Ghost (for WinXP) because I use "DOS mode" and then backup - I like it because I know no file has changed since started backup. My intention is to create backup of whole system one's per month at night time when system is not necessary to be up and running.

Can "Veritas Backup Exec" and "Symantec LiveState™ Recovery Advanced Server" be used in "DOS mode". How do they work? Can be the image restored to 1 month before disaster (like Ghost)?

 

[grofaty]

Can NTBACKUP use "DOS mode" to backup system?

 

[bkuepers]

What he means by "bios as logical drive" is that the RAID controller stores the partition information. To the operating system and any back program it just looks like one disk as apposed to 4 in a RAID set for example.

If you just need a monthy backup like your talking about Ghost will work fine. It should work with most current RAID controller.

How do you currently do nightly backups?

Also, for disaster recovery, there are other things to thing about such as where are you going to pull hardware from and have it in 5 hours, etc. Just some food for thought.

 

[grofaty]

bkuepers, thanks.

"How do you currently do nightly backups?": I am not doing a backup yet!!!!!

The primary task is: in case of disaster not to loose data. On this computer there is plenty of software installed and installation of this software last for few days and what is more important many people have to install them. So if one person is out of the office system will not be posible to reestablished.


I don't like NTBACKUP, because it only supports backup of files and not whole disk system (partitions).

I use "Norton Ghost 8.00" on WinXP, I think it is not the newest version of Ghost. This Ghost is not working on Win2003 with RAID disks.

Has someone test this out with newer version of Ghost?

Can 400 GB of disk storage be backup-ed up to 20 GB tapes. So does Ghoust supports "file splitting"?

 

[bkuepers]

Your ghost image will server the purpose of restoring the system to a point in time (everytime your software changes on the server create an image or something along those lines) and make it so you don't need to reinstall the software on the server. However, you really need to do tape or file based backups using either NTBACKUP or Veritas Backup Exec nightly to offset that.

Hypothetic situation would be that you lose your disk drives and need to restore the server. You put in the drives, reimage the server(from your last image), and then restore the data from your last tape backup.

It'll be tough to get 400 GB backed up on 20GB tapes. That will be alot of tape switching. You could do differentials or incrementals to help that a bit though.

You will probably need to upgrade your tape backup devices because of that fact you need to backup 400GB since you currently only have 20GB tapes(DAT?). I'd recommend LTO or SDLT for that, preferrably in a tape library or autoloader so you don't have to switch tapes yourself.

 

[grofaty]

bkuepers, is there any simple way to find if "bios as logical drive" is turned on?

 

[grofaty]

Hi,

I got no answer, is there any simple way to find if "bios as logical drive" is turned on?

Thanks,
Grofaty

 

[Seaspray0]

How to tell if your raid is software or hardware:

If you use a good controller, then you should have access to the controller through either the POST utility or with a program utility supplied by your hardware vendor. The utility will tell you how the hard drives are configured (raid, etc) on the controller.

In hardware raid, the controller supplies to the computer what it has set up and NOT each individual drive... i.e. if the controller has 6 drives set up as a singe raid 5, then it reports to the computer that it has a singe drive. The computer thinks it has a single drive. In disk manager, you will see a single drive. If you back up this drive, then you have backed up your data on the raid. All drive raid configuration is handled behind the scenes by the controller. You can crash the OS but the controller will retain the raid configuration.

In software raid, the drives are not configured as Raid by the controller. The utility will have each drive configured individually and will report each drive to the Computer and operating system. In disk manager you will see all the drives. You will also see the raid built by the operating system to make the drives appear as a single drive letter in explorer. Here, you can see the drive raid configuration handled by the operating system. If you backup the single drive letter, you have backed up the data on the raid. All the drive raid configuration is handled by the OS so if it crashes, you may lose your raid configuration.




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