HP ProLiant ML350 G3 failure planning?

[ADI_KTS]

greetings HP community, I come to you hoping that I might get some direction because I'm in a bit of a strange situation.

I recently took over the Tech Manager position at a small business. A part of this position is taking care of IT for the facility, something I have very little experience with. I've gotten a grip on most aspects of the situation, but the one thing I've yet to nail down is proper emergency planning for the ProLiant ML350 G3 at the facility.

The ML350 runs Microsoft Small Business Server 2003. It's purpose is to host our Mail (using Exchange, something that's easy enough to understand) and to run a scheduling program called ScheduAll, which requires SQL (something I have no familiarity with at all).

I currently have a .bkf and ASR diskette for this machine (created from the Windows Backup utility), but I'm not exactly sure how to apply it in the event of a failure; I've read conflicting accounts.

In any case, any council on how to properly restore with a .bkf, or any other info on how to proceed in the event of a failure would be greatly appreciated.

I'll answer any questions about the set up as best I can.

Thanks very much.

[Trygve Henriksen]

What kind of backup routines do you have?

Does your backup system have a 'Disaster restore' function?

(Can be called a lot of things)

Those disks you have are commonly used to attempt repairing a broken Windows.

Personally, I don't bother.

It's often much quicker to just reinstall the OS from scratch, and you don't have to bother with all the crap and erors in Registry.

(I hope all your data is on another drive than the OS)

Do you have any training in installing and managing 2003? If not, get it as quickly as possible.

Also, that server is getting pretty old. Chances are that you will get some kind of failure soon.

(Drives will be nearing the end of their usable life)

[ADI_KTS]

Thanks very much for your reply Trygve Henriksen.

As for a back up routine, I typically run the Windows Backup Utility once a week (creating an ASR Diskette and .bkf file). This is just the program that's native to Windows, no third party software.

I agree that it's much simpler and cleaner to reinstall the OS from scratch and restore from there, but I'm not sure the best way to go about it using what I have (.bkf files) OR if there's another way I should be backing up the server. Forgive my ignorance.

It appears that the OS is on the C: drive while all the data is on the D: drive. Would it be best to back up the D: drive data and, in the event of a failure, reinstall the OS on the C: drive and restore the data to the D: drive? If so, what would be the proper way to do this?

As far as training on installing an managing SBS 2003, I've done research on it and at this point I'm just most worried about having a proper back up ready because no one before me bothered with it.

Thanks so very much

[ADI_KTS]

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc875820.aspx

Here is the procedure that I'm loosely following. However, it's not clear that in the event that the OS needs to be reinstalled from scratch and/or the drives need to be replaced that this will be of any help.

It seems that in the wizard to restore from backup, the only options for restoring are the specific .bkf's that the OS created. So, if the OS is reinstalled from scratch, I can't see how the .bkf's created from the previous installation would work.

[ADI_KTS]

Also, would this video be helpful for reinstalling the OS? Seems like it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J0vD3pWqbw