January 9, 2006 at 3:01 pm
I've been designated the sys admin for a sql server, and am investigating the best way to backup the entire server, (OS, Website, SQL DB) so that a restore can be done in the shorted possible time. As I spent a good deal of time locking down 2003, I'd prefer not to have to reinstall it from scratch. Any suggestions on programs which not only allow for a quick restore of the OS, but also backup the DB and website files? Backup Exec's OS restore function is horrible, Danz Retrospect is extremely slow, etc. tell me there is a perfect app!
January 10, 2006 at 1:47 am
I am a fan of Drive Snapshot:
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/
Simple and inexpensive ($115 per server), runs on Windows NT+, no boot to DOS required. It does everyting I need to capture the snapshot image of the Server partitions, even while they are in use. Especially useful for static server configurations like web servers. It will create a snapshot of the partition while the partition is active, so there is no real reason to not have frequent image creation. When required you can restore the partition exactly to the same state it was before the image was recorded. You will need to build a boot disk in order to restore your boot partition.
I use the BartPE system:
Since SQL Server data files are never static, you will want a seperate backup scheme for your databases, and would have to restore the latest SQL Server database backups after restoring an image. I use the built in SQL Server scheduled Backup to disk files on another server.
After restoring the partitions from snapshot, boot the server then:
1) stop sqlserveragent service
2) stop mssqlserver
3) copy the backup files to the server
4) start mssqlserver in single user mode (net start mssqlserver /m)
5) restore master database from the copied backup file (master is the only database that demands the server to be in single-user mode when a restore is attempted)
6) restart mssqlserver in multi-user mode
7) restore the rest of the databases from the copied backup files
The interval of Database backup for your server will determine how much data is lost on a recovery. I always store the database files on a different partition than the operating system, to enable restoration of the Boot partition without affecting the database files.
Do not forget that master, model, and msdb databases are required to recover your server installation. Not to mention your other databases.
Andy
January 10, 2006 at 9:15 am
Hi,
Depends on your backup needs, budget, backup media etc.
I'm running Windows 2003 and SQL 2000 in production. For nightly backups our sysadmin uses Veritas Backup Exec 9.1
We also run other versions of Veritas on other servers.
It does a nice job of getting system and database files. Restores without any problems so far.
Lots of other options out there.
Greg H
January 10, 2006 at 10:21 am
Thanks for the help so far - we are looking into using Acronis True Image Server to backup the OS periodically. All of the important data, ie. the program that is being hosted on the server and the SQL DB is on a seperate array. The issue with Acronis is that the images are too large to really want to use it to image the Data array regularly, so I am looking into using BackupExec and the SQL Agent to backup the program install directory and the DB each night. It sounds like BackupExec works well, so we'll see if I can convince the powers that be to purchase both programs... Its too bad there isn't a good program to image the OS array occasionally and then also backup the data each night. Very few programs image well and also do file\folder and SQL DB backup.
January 11, 2006 at 8:12 am
I am not one to advertise or sell third party products but about 2 years ago I began using RedGate SQL Backup for SQLServer needs. I evaluated it against 3 other leading softwares and chose this on performance and price. Very reasonable $395 per server license. Not sure what size your databases are but the compression is awesome, up to 90%. I am backing up one database that is currently about 160GB and it compresses it down to a 20GB file. Also backup and restore times are faster than native. Give it a shot, its a free download from RedGate. You can also integrate and schedule through SQL Agent. Backup Exec with the SQLServer licensing is a little hoaky and restrictive on restores.
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