What are the Best Practices of Data Backup!!

[Tamer Shaalan]

Dear ALL,

I have two windows 2003 EE servers (one is primary domain controller and it secondar). I have 2 SCSI Hard disks on each one. I want to make the second hard disk is a mirro of the first on each server (like HP mirroring software in HP-UX). What is the suggested solutions. Other ideas are most welcome.

10 Points for good replies.

Tamer.

[Ivan Ferreira]

You can simply use the mirroring features of windows disk management.

Convert your disks to dynamic and add the mirror.

See:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=323432&SD=tech


Also, ensure that you have an ASR backup.

[Oguz Kutlu Asik]

Hi,

What if you lose them both because of a physical or electrical problem, for instance? If the subject is backup, I think best to do is taking online or offline images of system partitions regularly (not too often) to other media that's not on same server, build a backup/maintenance plan for other datas, then consider mirroring. If you have a current image of system partitions, then you can backup files with ntbackup, data protector or something. You can set a schedule like full file backup on Saturdays at 02:00 and incremental backup at 02:00 on other days etc.

[Tamer Shaalan]

lvan,

Windows mirroring is a good idea, but Really I don't know what is the effect of this mirroring on performance. I'm afraid of impacting the performance by this method. Can any one who used windows mirroring tell me about that?

[Ivan Ferreira]

Yes, performance will be impacted. But, normally, you don't have the application data in the same disk as the operating system.

So, if you mirror only the operating system by software, performance impact will be minimal.

Also, when you restore the system from the ASR backup, the system partition is formatted, that's another reason to not have the data and the operating system on the same disk.

You should also move the paging file (pagefile.sys) to another disk. Do this in system properties.

Anyway, if you have the data with the operating system, you have to do a balance beetween availability and performance. The performance for a mirror is good for reads and fair for writes. I cannot predict exactly how much the performance will be affected. You should run your own tests.

[Igor Karasik]

IMHO, windows software mirroring = bad idea.
Besides of performance issues you may have different problems with dynamic disks.
If you cannot use hardware RAID card - don't use mirroring at all.
Certainly you need to do regular backup
(but you need backup even if you have mirroring)

[Tamer Shaalan]

lgor,

do you mean mirroring of WINDOWS is bad or generally the mirroring idea? If mirroring isn't recommended in general, what methods/practices that I should go with? by the way, I don't have tape devices. Instead I have DVD writers attached to these servers. I know backup procedures (and software) are a lot, but I need the most powerful one. Also, I have Acronis software.

Tamer.

[Igor Karasik]

Tamer,
Mirroring is a very good idea.
Hardware mirroring is perfect, we use it on all our Proliant servers. We don't buy servers without SmartArray card.
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/arraycontrollers/index.html
Software mirroring - bad idea, especially on Windows.
We use Veritas Backup Exec (now Symantec) with LTO tapes for our servers backup.
Generally you can use windows 2003 buil-in backup tool.
Veritas Backup Exec have more features and have agents for SQL/Oracle/Exchange and etc,
but windows 2003 built-in backup maybe enough for your environment if you backup only Domain controllers.
You can do "on-disk" backup and write backup files to your DVD later.

[Ivan Ferreira]

You can also use HP Data Protector for backup. It has an option for disaster recovery where you can fully recover your server from the backup without reinstalling. There is another solution called One button disaster recovery.

[Tamer Shaalan]

lvan,

Where can I get HP Data Protector? Is it possible to use it with DVD writers? Now, I'm hesitating between what types that should I perform (Image based backups or file based backups or both?). Also, I need a solution that gives me a total system recovery in min time.

[Alan_152]

A "Best Practice" is realizing that mirroring is not a backup solution -- a controller failure will leave your mirror worthless too.

Get yourself a small LTO or SDLT library (a 6 tape/1 drive autoloader can be found pretty cheap these days) and some decent backup software and set up an automated differential schedule once you've completed a full backup (and hidden it away). Or, if $$$ is a problem, get yourself a single tape drive and a stack of tapes, and do a manual Tower of Hanoi (time intensive, but worth it) -- it can even be done with MS-Backup (shudder) if you have nothing else to work with.

[Gary Cooper_1]

Mirroring is certainly a good idea. Having a mirror has saved my skin twice in the last couple of years on an HP-UX server (this machine uses Mirror Disk-UX, which is a software solution). I've also got a SBS 2003 machine which has hardware mirroring and that too has saved my skin when one of the disks went down recently.

For servers, I certainly wouldn't go without it in future. Money is a concern and so I tend to look for a low cost solution (my RAID card for my Dell PowerEdge server was about £40!).

If performance is a concern (or you can get a really good deal on a RAID card), then I would say go for a hardware solution whenever you can. Software solutions do work, but there will obviously be a performance penalty.

As mentioned earlier, mirroring isn't a substitute for a proper backup scheme, preferably backing up to tape. Again, you can use either native MS backup or a third party product.

I use backup Exec on my SBS 2003 machine at work (which is really a throwback to SBS4.5 days when MS backup was severely functionally challenged) and MS Backup on my SBS 2003 machine at home. I find that MS Backup fails occasionally if I forget to replace the tape. But MS Backup is free and Backup Exec isn't.

As for backing up to DVD, I would say that it's not really a professional solution - OK for home users. The main problem here is data capacity and speed of backup.

I hope that helps,

Regards,

Gary

[Ivan Ferreira]

To learn more about data protector, visit:

http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/dataprotector/

[Omar Senussi]

Hi Tamer,
Here is my tuppence.. for what it's worth!
I have played around with imaging software, nd have found V2i Protector (server edition) (as was B4 Powerquestwas swallowed by Symantec!)and Acronis server/enterprise server work just great with server 2K,2K3 and SBS 2K3. A word of warning on Dynamic disks.. generally NOT supported.

As mentioned in another post, if you don't have a 24/7 situation, this is probably the fastest way you are going to get your server back up and running. Just for belt and braces.. I also use NTbackup onto 2 external usb HD's which I rotate and take offsite!
Regards .. Omar

[Tamer Shaalan]

Salamo Alykom Omar,

You know, I just was thinking in this solution, as I have no 24/7 operations. ISA, Iâ ll use Acronis to take images from Hard disk. But I need advices from you: how frequent take these images? Can I boot from the image to recover the machine totally (HD media failure case)? Store these images on DVDs or USB hard disks? How to take file backup (is windows built in backup tool reliable)? Iâ ll so happy if you give me a comprehensive backup view.

Thanks a lot.

Tamer.

[Omar Senussi]

Wa 3aleikum Tamer!

You can boot from a CD which you create via the Acronis program. This will allow you to restore your image onto the disk or a new disk.

It really depends on your situation how you do the backups. I do an image of the static OS files just once, checking , of course that I can rely on it, by doing a restore onto another disk and checking that everything restores OK. I also do incremental images once a month.
It is CRITICAL that you check the restorability!! either on the original server, if practicable, or on a standby machine.. which would be preferable as you have a 24/7 scenario.
If you have applications like Oracle of SQL or Exchange, you need to find some way of getting a true image.. otherwise the files will be out of sync! In which case you may need to use a combination of tape backup with the appropriate software with agents for your application(s) and images. Finally check that the disk config you plan to use is compatibe with Acronis software. You can download a fully functional trial version to try out from their website.
On the matter of the media for the images, DVD is probably too slow, and in my case would require too many!..
My choice is USB HD .. quick, portable, and relatively inexpensive. I rotate 3 drives..keeping one off site at any one time. call me a paranoid.. but I like to be safe!

Good luck.. let us know how it works for you!

Regards.. Omar