Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of bouletmike
bouletmike

asked on

Best method of doing continuous data protection for Small Business Server 2003

I am researching different ways to implement continuous data protection at my company.  I am using Small Business Server 2003 and would like to be able to provide continuous backup to general data, exchange, sharepoint and sql.  There seem to be so many ways to do this.  Should I use a third party software such as Veritas Backup Exec 10d?  If so, should I send the data to a NAS, external hard drive or some other data storage option?  Should I use a solution such as Sonicwall's 2440i?  A couple of things to consider:  
1.  I am currently backing up about 60 GB of data but I anticipate that this could double in one year.  I am currently using BackupAssist for this.  
2.  I am doing nightly backups to a rotation of  external hard drives that are taken off premises daily, I will continue to do this even when I do CDP.  
3.  I am currently running just one server but this could increase to 2 servers in the next year.
4.  A nice added benefit that I have considered with a NAS is additional storage space that could be utilized by users for archived data that is used infrequently.
5.  My maximum budget for this would be $5000 but I would like to accomplish this for less than $3000.

Thanks in advance for you advice!  
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Jeffrey Kane - TechSoEasy
Jeffrey Kane - TechSoEasy
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Avatar of bouletmike
bouletmike

ASKER

Is there a reason that I would not want to consider using Veritas Backup Exec with a NAS such as the ReadyNAS 1000S from Infrant Technologies (http://www.infrant.com/) ?  I can buy Backup Exec for around $600 and ReadyNAS 1000S will be about $2000 for a unit with 4 - 400gb drives in it.  Any idea if the Backup Exec running "full time" on the server will create a noticable strain on server resources?  Certainly the Sonicwall will be much less demand on the server but it also offers much less capacity and I don't believe that you can do RAID with the Sonicwall product.

Thanks,

Mike
The strain on the server is exactly the problem with running CDP on your SBS.  You would definitely want to run that on a separate machine.  If you've ever logged onto an SBS when it's running it's nightly backup, you'd know what I mean... the potential for it to overheat or crash is there.... backup takes up a ton of resources and if you aren't going to run it in  the middle of the night, then I'd definitely put it off to another machine.

Jeff
TechSoEasy
I have done my research on Sonicwall.  While it seems like they have a good product, though it's not quite what I am looking to accomplish.  From what I understand their CDP is based more on a "file>save" action to create backup copies of files.  I have a Foxpro database at work that is always changing but there would be not save action done by users.  I am looking for a way to "continuously" backup any data that I select.  Any other ideas or suggestions?
bouletmike,

I'm glad you posted back because I was having a discussion about this exact thing a couple of days ago with a friend of mine.  I knew that I had answered a question about it and didn't have a chance to go and search for it to be able to add what my friend suggested... he's someone that has a lot of experience with SBS as well as disaster recovery procedures.

He recommends a Windows Storage Server with Doubletake (http://www.nsisoftware.com/what-we-offer/double-take/) and there is an MS whitepaper about it here:  http://sbsurl.com/doubletake

Jeff
TechSoEasy
Jeff:

I will look into it at get back to you.  Thanks for the effort!

Mike
I spoke to Double Take and they told me that there product is not intended to be used with Small Business Server 2003 and is not supported in that type of environment.
You missed the point that you need to also have Windows Storage Server as your data endpoint!  And of course they support it... why in the heck did they put out a white paper on it?  Of course you would have had to look up how to connect a WSS to an SBS... but here ya go:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/wss2003/techinfo/plandeploy/wss_sbs.mspx

Jeff
TechSoEasy