Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Flemming Riis — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 21:47:35 GMT

time to bug the home server team for w2k8 client support

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

mikestre — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:42:24 GMT

Keith,

I'm already using my HP MediaSmart Home Server to back up a Dell server running Windows 2008. The Home Server components installed on Windows 2008 without any problem

Mike

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Keith Combs — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:52:56 GMT

Mike,

Have you done a bare metal restore? And have you done the restore to a hard drive that is smaller than the original?

Time to ping the internal discussion group.

Now I have a reason to spend more money... like I needed one. :?)

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

mikestre — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 23:06:39 GMT

Keith,

Not so far, but based on anecdotal evidence of the capabilities of Home Server, it should be possible to restore to a different drive on a different system than the original. Don't know if that applies when the new drive is smaller, but still large enough to hold the image. You would have to bounce that off the Home Server crew.

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Jordan — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:07:31 GMT

It kinda surprised me upon initial reading that you DONT already use WinPE/ImageX to swap around images.

Its free and made by your company :).

Its what i use, without paying a penny. Just remember if your changing HAL's on the hardware you need to sysprep it to switch detecthal.

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Mike - MVP Windows Desktop Experience — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:01:49 GMT

I've used Acronis True Image for 2008 as well, but I of course have to boot into the CD image to image the drive. Not ideal, but cheap, and I trust TI. :)

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

nmercer — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:54:43 GMT

Keith, WHS backup lets you restore to a smaller drive, in fact it is dead simple with a nice wizard UI and everything when you boot of the restore CD

Home Server has saved me several times with laptop HDD failure

Cheers

Nathan

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Alex Parker — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:58:35 GMT

Keith,

Kindof a tangent...but it might be helpful...

I have struggled with this very issue many times and keep coming back to virtualization. In the end I just moved all my "Prod & DEV" home servers to VMs.

Instead of backing up physical machines, I just backup VMs. I have two physical machines that are configured identically to host the VMs. I can move the VMs between them by moving my external eSata RAID drives between the servers in the event of a failure.

If your workloads allow you to virtualize, that would be my approach.

The other benefit is that one of the machines can run Windows Vista, provided that you aren't looking to run Hyper-V virtual machines.

You will just need to some extra work to automate Virtual PC to auto start your machines on reboot of the Vista host. On the other hand there is VM**** server which will run just fine on a Vista client.

That way you don't have to struggle to get the multimedia stuff to work on a W2K8 client and also spend a fortune on AV, firewall and backup software.

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Andy Helsby — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:18:40 GMT

Home server won't fit the under $100 bill (unless you include the microsoft discounts you will get). Also I'm assuming this $100 doesnt include the hardware?

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Ron Fairchild — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:41:10 GMT

try the drive imag solution from TeraByte Unlimited. They aren't as elegant as Symantec or Acronis solutions but they do always seem to work and they are reasonably priced. I don't think you will have the ability to mount the image in a virtual machine as with the other two but your not out a lot of $$ either.

re: Looking for a poor mans Windows Server 2008 backup

Mike Stankavich — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:24:16 GMT

Keith,

I've been evaluating Macrium Reflect for my home office Server 2003 box. It appears to be working well thus far, but I haven't attempted a bare metal restore yet. I'll have to give that a try soon. According to posts on the Macrium support forum it works on Server 2008, but there are some small installer issues that they are working out.

http://www.macrium.com/default.asp