Online Backup for PC servers

Yeap, Yuray is right.
besides u won't have to use tape for backups, using ATI u can directly backup to external or any other removable disk (say, DVD, USB)

Hi All,

Is it possible to do a disk cloning of the system disks with minimal downtime?

I hope the server can be restored immediaely once the system disk is crashed. i.e I can take out the crashed disk and inserted a backup disk to restore the service immeidately.

Please advise.

For that you can use the software suggested by yuray, but the server version is pretty expensive. This will work best if you only have one DC running AD directory in your network. If there are more servers which are DC's, you'd get problems with the AD database integrity. In such a case you'll have to restore the AD database to the server after restoring the image using m$'s AD replication.

Hi rindi,

I have only one Domain controller in my system.

For the tools Acronis True Image , I wonder whether I can have a disk-to-disk cloning of my system disks.

When there is a disk failure, I hope I can stop my server, take out the failed disk and reinsert my back up disk only to recover my system.

Can the Acronis True Image do this exactly?

Trueimage only makes image files, but it doesn't "clone" disks. To clone disks you'd need acronis disk director suite.

bootit-ng from terrabyte unlimited can do both, but when you are cloning the disk the server needs to be down.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

"Trueimage only makes image files, but it doesn't "clone" disks. To clone disks you'd need acronis disk director suite."

wrong it can clone disks, and you don't need to have disk director. Also disk director suite won't work on server os's(what i guess iecu has).

For true image you can make an image of the system disk and then restore it on the new one.

With trueimage you first have to make an image then restore that image to the other HD. with diskdirector suite you can clone directly, and there is a server version. The problem with acronis is that it is quite expensive, although the symantec products are even more expensive. Bootit-ng on the other hand is less than $100.-- and works on servers or whatever you like, and you can use it for everything, like create image files or clone HD's, resize partitions etc.

"with diskdirector suite you can clone directly, and there is a server version."

i agree with you that disk drector has a server version, but i can't agree with you that it can clone disks and make images. it's only 3d party partition software, also it has additional utilities like os selector(boot manager) and recovery expert (help to recover lost or accidentally deleted partitions), but i've never heard about disk director is imaging prog. I've searched their site and also couldn't find any info concerning this.

It isn't imaging software, but it can clone disks. There is an option where you can copy a partition to another. It can't make image files though. Trueimage makes image files and doesn't directly clone the partition.

hmm, yes disk director can copy partitions, but not clone! and true image can clone the whole disks. that's the difference (also there is another utility from acronis for cloning disks - migrate easy, but its' functions are included in TI).