Introducing the Small Business Server 2011 Backup Wizard

[Today's post comes to us courtesy of Shawn Sullivan from Commercial Technical Support]

SBS 2011, just like SBS 2008, includes a backup wizard that is integrated into the SBS console for the purpose of allowing administrators to quickly create a robust backup/restore strategy without requiring them to have prior experience in Windows backup technology. It’s a simple custom interface that calls upon the native Windows Server Backup utility to do its work while keeping much of the underlying complexity in the background. In particular, it's designed to give the administrator no choice but to configure a recurring backup job that will perform a full backup of all critical volumes that is Bare Metal Recovery capable. At the same time, it allows you to select any additional data drives that you wish to include in the job.  If you have Exchange, Sharepoint, or SQL data on any of the drives you select, that data will be backed up as well.  In fact, with the exception of the default daily backup schedule (12:00pm and 11:00pm instead of 5:00pm and 11:00pm), the flow of the wizard and its options are identical to what they were in SBS 2008. For more details you can read our previous post on the SBS Backup Wizard.

What has changed is the feature set available through the native Windows Server Backup utility. Several options that were absent from the Windows Server 2008 version have been added in Windows Server 2008 R2. However, with the design intention on being as simple as possible, the SBS Backup Wizard does not expose or leverage these new options. You can still use them, but you just have to use the Windows Server Backup console, the WBADMIN command line tool, or the PowerShell snap-In to do so:

• Individual file selection is not limited just to restore operations, but for backup as well.
• You can exclude file types and paths from backup selection.
• You can target just the System State data for backup and restore from the Windows Server Backup Console now.
  • You can also include the System State along with files, volumes, or applications in the same backup job without performing a full server backup.
• Network shares are now valid targets to store backups.
  • Note: If you store backups in a network share, only one version of your backup will be maintained. You will be required to overwrite the existing backup.
• The WBADMIN command line tool has been expanded to accommodate the new features.
• A new PowerShell snap-in for Windows Server Backup is available.

If you are interested in learning more about or implementing these, you should start here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee344835(WS.10).aspx.