A few 2003 Server Questions

platypus · 19 Oct 2009 at 14:28

I have a box at home that I want to stick 2003 on to do some AD learning.

Just wondering if anyone knows of any software that can monitor the devices on the network and automatically back them up at any given period? And any duplication software that could be run on the disks?

GhostlyPea · 19 Oct 2009 at 15:02

Depends on budget/technical needs. I'm not sure of anything free but you could use a scheduled task and a robocopy batch file...either that or if you're flush then maybe backup exec

- Pea0n

Priapus · 19 Oct 2009 at 15:25

Why not just set the folder locations on the work stations to a folder on the server so it syncs it. then just run software on the server to backup that one folder that resides on the server.

Example:

PC - Tony.
His my documents folder location: \\server1\users and documents\tony\documents.

Then on the backup on server, include this location: c:\users and documents

That should do this trick?

platypus · 19 Oct 2009 at 16:12

Aye thats a good couple of suggestions, ta.

Sp00n · 19 Oct 2009 at 16:49

Ice On Fire said:
Why not just set the folder locations on the work stations to a folder on the server so it syncs it. then just run software on the server to backup that one folder that resides on the server.

Example:

PC - Tony.
His my documents folder location: \\server1\users and documents\tony\documents.

Then on the backup on server, include this location: c:\users and documents

That should do this trick?

this.

Skidilliplop · 20 Oct 2009 at 12:59

If you want byte level sync of folders or drives you could use rSync. The ability to schedule the sync will depend on the Rsync application you choose.

Another way to do it is to use volume shadow copy to take snapshots on a schedule then sync the live data and the snapshots to a backup location.

Personally I prefer to use virtual machines for stuff like this because it's a lot easier to set up and roll back to snapshots because the feature is usually built into the virtual host software. Plus you'd only then need to backup the directories containing the Machine data and the virtual disks and you'll have every concievable aspect of them safe. You could probably get away with just backing up the virtual disk files and not lose anything within the virtual machine. I use virtualbox for this, but any free virtual host would do.