Figin
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Best way to back up Small Business 2003 using Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 remote agent?
We are doing a SBS transition pack "upgrade" this weekend and want to ensure we have the best possible backup prior to this. I don't have a tremendous amount of experience with SBS.
The backup is done through a remote agent to a machine running Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 and some rather nice iSCSI storage arrays. It has the main C:\ drive and an E:\ data drive for file shares.
Since it's a DC *and* a file server *and* an Exchange server, I was curious what the experts would recommend as the best way to back it up using our existing software and infrastructure.
Should I back up the C:\ and E:\ and system state and the Information Store as one backup or separate out the IS? Should I exclude anything from the file system backup? Am I totally missing something?
I realize to restore, we'll need to reinstall SBS and the remote agent and then restore on top of itself (unless there's a better way that I've never heard of)
Thanks in advance!
The backup is done through a remote agent to a machine running Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 and some rather nice iSCSI storage arrays. It has the main C:\ drive and an E:\ data drive for file shares.
Since it's a DC *and* a file server *and* an Exchange server, I was curious what the experts would recommend as the best way to back it up using our existing software and infrastructure.
Should I back up the C:\ and E:\ and system state and the Information Store as one backup or separate out the IS? Should I exclude anything from the file system backup? Am I totally missing something?
I realize to restore, we'll need to reinstall SBS and the remote agent and then restore on top of itself (unless there's a better way that I've never heard of)
Thanks in advance!
evgeny_f31
you can do image backup, with acronis or clonezilla, maybe to an external hard disk
I agree with above, but for this, I would not trust clonezilla. Stick with Acronis. You will want to do a separate system state backup from the image. If oyu needed to just restore system state, then you would have to extract that from the image by loading in a VM and then backing it up. much easier to get the system state and then backup the whole image. <learned from experience.
If symantec is your only option, then you will want to make sure that it is backing up Exchange properly. The default product does not backup exchange. It will backup the physical store, but will not backup exchange properly for easy restoring.
If symantec is your only option, then you will want to make sure that it is backing up Exchange properly. The default product does not backup exchange. It will backup the physical store, but will not backup exchange properly for easy restoring.
ASKER
It does have the Exchange agent so I can back up the IS. If I do that should I exclude anything from the file system backup or just let it back up everything?
Everything if you have teh space. You can choose to not restore if needed.
ASKER
I agree.
I guess I was asking more of an Exchange question then, do I need to exclude the Exchange data directories from the file system backup? Just confirming.
I guess I was asking more of an Exchange question then, do I need to exclude the Exchange data directories from the file system backup? Just confirming.
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