Windows 2003 server - Production

[Srinivasan Krishnamurth]

We have a production server on which i have installed some application. Operating systems is windows 2003 server standard edition. What would be best option to have a DR plan to restore the data & get the server back to operation, apart from the normal backup.

Please suggest.

Rgds
Srinivasan

[Ivan Ferreira]

You must create an ASR backup with ntbackup at least. The ASR backup restore a windows installation, but eliminates all data in the system partition.

You sould use a disk image software to create a backup of your server installation and to reduce downtime during a disaster.

HP provides Open View Data Protector One button disaster recovery.

[Rune J. Winje]

Depending on how important the server is to business and if you have hardware raid possibility with hotswap disks:

Some customers buy an extra disk, mirror the OS-disk, takes the extra disk out and stores it a safe place. This is only a good solution if the OS-dis contains mostly static data.

For database servers there are better methods of log-shipping etc to keep a (remote) standby server synchronized for quick switch over.


Cheers,
Rune

[Tim Malnati]

When you start discussing DR there are several considerations that have to be considered. First, what is the cost to the business whenever the machine application is not available? And next, what is the cost associated with any lost data? These are both questions that the end user (real owner) of the application has to determine before you can adequately respond with recommendations to improve the long term availability of the application.

I noticed in particular that you mentioned the term 'restore the data' in your question. My guess is that you may be talking about the stored data that the application is producing. More often than not this data is being stored within some sort of database. These days most databases have some sort of transaction logging facility available. Replicating this data is often the first defense in a DR scenario when this data is critical.

There are many hardware and networking solutions. Some DR solutions can have the application back in seconds and others can involve many hours. The range of costs associated with the various methods vary greatly. So it is a matter of the application owner determining the risks and costs associated with the loss of this application and the willingness of the organization to expend resources to limit the risk.

[Antoniov.]

Hi Srinivasan,
your question is too wide to give a good answer.
If you have a production server, I guess you have also a development server. I think your company can buy two mirrored disk for OS. In my mind, the solution is:
a) Two mirrored disk for OS
b) Raid disk for your data
If your company budget help you, you can use a raid for both server and clustered solution (two production servers).
For limited budget you can use mirrored disks for data.

Backup every day, full backup one time for week at least, incremental backup every day.

Antonio Vigliotti