Disaster recovery for a mission critical server Windows 2003 with SQL2000
Hello All,
We have a few windows2003 servers which include a few file servers and one server (Dell PE2800) that has two mission critical appliocations in addition to SQL2000 running on it. It is mirrored and also has RAID5 for DATA. it is right arcserv11.1.
one of the application is so customized so reinstalling in case of a disaster will be a headache. if the server crashes (software wise) I need to be able to restore it within one day max. any idea what I can do. I get a full back every night including system state but not sure if this would restore the entire server. it has about 100GB of data on it.
The budget is around $1000 or so, so I cannot afford clustering the server or anything of that sort. If I can create an image onto an exteral snap server I can live with that, would that be bare metal restore, meaning I do not have to reinstall the OS and just bring it up, how reliable is that.
It is a member server in AD2003.
Thank you for your help
We have a few windows2003 servers which include a few file servers and one server (Dell PE2800) that has two mission critical appliocations in addition to SQL2000 running on it. It is mirrored and also has RAID5 for DATA. it is right arcserv11.1.
one of the application is so customized so reinstalling in case of a disaster will be a headache. if the server crashes (software wise) I need to be able to restore it within one day max. any idea what I can do. I get a full back every night including system state but not sure if this would restore the entire server. it has about 100GB of data on it.
The budget is around $1000 or so, so I cannot afford clustering the server or anything of that sort. If I can create an image onto an exteral snap server I can live with that, would that be bare metal restore, meaning I do not have to reinstall the OS and just bring it up, how reliable is that.
It is a member server in AD2003.
Thank you for your help
As long as you didn't need hardware and just needed to reload you could probably do this whole thing in about 3 hours depending on how big the files are..............vm files.
Some suggest against using SQL in vm but i do it just fine, just make sure server is powerful enough which it should be if it runs sql today and thats all it does
Some suggest against using SQL in vm but i do it just fine, just make sure server is powerful enough which it should be if it runs sql today and thats all it does
ASKER
the customization on the server for the app alone costed us over $35k. It will be hard to move this to a vmware box. my main concern is the apps and configs of these apps. the sql database are nightly created as dump files.
I just want to make sure the server can come up in a few hours.
I just want to make sure the server can come up in a few hours.
honestly whatever you do, i would check with the company who made the customizations to ensure you get any files that need to be backed up and relate to the customizations. I would hate to call them and say we lost it all and they could have helped ensure you have all appropriate files.
I know thats not the answer you want but thought i would add.
I know thats not the answer you want but thought i would add.
ASKER
everything is backup on tape nightly. I just want to make sure the backup tape is not my only solution in case of windows hosing out on me.
I need to make sure the server can be restored in a timely manner. customizations are basically files done as config files and integrations. these were done over several months of application tweaking.
I just hate to reload all of them in a crash
I need to make sure the server can be restored in a timely manner. customizations are basically files done as config files and integrations. these were done over several months of application tweaking.
I just hate to reload all of them in a crash
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Here is a previous post I just answered.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/22846162/Will-Acronis-work-for-my-system-upgrade.html
I can't tell you how much I like Acronis. It worked well with my SNAP server.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/22846162/Will-Acronis-work-for-my-system-upgrade.html
I can't tell you how much I like Acronis. It worked well with my SNAP server.
The other thing you may want to consider is using the free version of VMWare. Then you load server with OS and VMWare and make the SQL server a virtual server within that one. Then you take the VMDK files which make up the virtual server and you save them on DVD or tape or whereever. Then when server dies you get new server, load OS, load VMWare, copy VMDK files on vmserver and start vm. DONE servers ready.