Hi everybody,

I'm looking at making a backup server to back up all computers on my LAN, (3-4) computers, all running Windows XP.

I have an old box which can act as the server and I was hoping I could get some advice on software.

I've been searching through the forums and found http://www.restore-backup.com/ which seems very promising and http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/

The only problem is I simply have no idea why any is any better than the other.

I would like to be able to backup files obviously but the option of backing up registry settings and other windows features like that would be good, giving me the ability to completly back up the OS.

I'm relativly new to this (server type thing) but I do have a little Linux experience (simply using the linux OS and CLI). I saw Ubunutu was the version used with the restore-backup site but I wondered if any of the other options were better.

Thank you

Forg

BackupPC seems to be of limited use. It cannot make copies of locked files. These are the most important system files on a Windows system. I am afraid you are not able to make a backup of a Windows system without using a user agent. A user agent is a program running on the machine-to-be-backedup which acesses the locked files in a special way and hands them over to the backup program. In addition, permissions cannot be maintained over Samba.

I use a Samba connection to backup my Windows systems only as secondary backup in addition to a tape drive. I use rsync. It is wonderful to restore a deleted file in minutes without having to load a tape. But as a full machine restore - no.

jlinkels

The 'Duplicity' package can handle remote backups. It avoids single large files by splitting the backup and keeping checksums to test for changes.

For more information checkout their home page at
Hope this helps,
Regards,
SIMP

Fedora User

Duplicity can't make full backups Windows machines either. These tools seem to be designed for Linux and I am sure they work great (for Linux).

Since I have same problem, I am wondering if it is possible to install Virtual Machines (Linux host, Windows guest) and make copies of the VM image as a backup.

This is way I want to go as I still need to run a few Windows servers for certain application. I say 'a few' because some applications are Windows versions dependent or can not run concurrently. I hope (but I am not sure yet) that certain virtualisation software allows that.

jlinkels

Just install Bacula which supports VSS (Volume Shadow Copy). Then you can stop this silly debate and you're done!

http://bacula.org/en/rel-manual/Wind...00000000000000

Yeah, I checked out this duplicity, looks interesting but it seems to me like it's just rsync that's beefed up with a lot of requirements. Any competent admin could write their own backup script using rsync instead of using this in a short amount of time.

Also I'm kind of baffled that an rsync based backup program would require NcFTP. That alone deters me from using something like this. Why in the hell would a backup program require FTP, bad idea in my opinion.

And yeah, doesn't even help the Windows backups needed.

I would be careful before jumping to Bacula:

All the problems with Bacula

That's what I do. I use VMware Server and have my virtualized servers backed up and have multiple snapshots taken for easy restore. And yes, if something goes wrong, just install the VMware software on another machine and copy over the image. VOILA! You are all set! You can also check out Xen, QEMU, and VirtualBox

Micro, that's way cool. I use VMware and VirtualBox, I should experiment with this in the near future. Thanks for the reassurance.

jlinkels

Thanks for the responses guys, some interesting options coming up. Can anybody comment on restore-backup.com? From what they had to offer it sounded a very good option, although perhaps the next version would be the best.

As for the VMware Server, how would that fit with a seperate server box and a LAN, or is that not the best idea?

Thanks again everybody!

Forg