Server Image Software

marin · 13 Nov 2009 at 16:33

After having a problem with a customers Server and then having issues with my existing imaging software (damaged database + slow and several emails later), I'm looking for a new way of imaging client Server's.

These are small to medium sized systems running SBS 2003 & Windows 2008 with budgets to match.

I'm looking at products from Acronis and BarracudaWare at the moment.

Can any one recommend any products that they have used and tried, would prefer products with bare metal restore as well but this would depend on cost.

bigdunc · 13 Nov 2009 at 16:57

We are currently using Acronis SBS 2010 and so far seems pretty nice. Only used it in test enviroments so far though.

mikeh501 · 13 Nov 2009 at 20:40

What if you turn it on its head and use virtualisation to get an image of the installed OS.

Skidilliplop · 16 Nov 2009 at 15:08

We use Symantec Backupexec. Though it can be pricey as the licensing is a bit anal. Though perhaps a competing brand might suit budgets better. I've not tried bare metal recovery other than from tapes but I believe you can use a bootable CD to image from a backup to Disk image file.

Virtualisation would be easy as you can just copy the machine snapshots and VDIs somewhere. However you won't get proper bare metal recovery from that as you'd need to have the hypervisor backed up aswell or install it manually before restoring. This might not be practical, depending on what your SLAs are.