Best Windows Server & Exchange bare metal backup software?

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minc3d

Gawd
Joined
Nov 27, 2004
Messages
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For the server people out there, what is your favorite backup software for handling daily/weekly backup of your servers?

I am trying to find out what program has the best features and stability for backing up Windows Server machines that creates images which can be considered "bare metal restores"?

This software should ideally be able to spit out images or backup files that can be quickly loaded onto a server and take it from full corruption to useful state in as few hours as possible. Also, if the software can take backup images without bringing the system down from operation, that would be even better. Not sure if this is ideal or possible however.

I've been researching Backup Exec and Acronis Server edition, but it's tough to find head to head comparisons on these suites. Any insight would be appreciated!
 
We're 100% virtual, so we use PHD Virtual for Citrix. They're suppose to be coming out with Hyper-V support hopefully this year. We can do a "bare metal" VM restore to any cluster we want.

Not sure if that helps or not, are you running physical boxes? If so, then probably not. :(
 
This is needed for a physical server, so this wouldn't be an option.

I've been reading a lot about ShadowProtect recently online. Lots of people tend to like this product. Anyone with experience w/ ShadowProtect, Acronis, or BackupExec?
 
I've had bad experience with Acronis where it messed up the boot partition of a server I was backing up, ironically though it saved my a$$ because I used it to image the data partition and only had to rebuild the boot partition and then restore from tape.I've used Backup Exec for over 10yrs and I like it, but restore from tape can take a lot of time even from an LTO but I trust Backup Exec. Curious about Shadow Protect, will look into it.
 
There are many software that can take Bare Metal backup from your operating system. Some have some functionalities that can recover the taken backup to a dissimilar hardware and many other functionalities. But consider that the Windows Server backup tool in Windows Server 2008 can also take Bare Metal backup. For more information see the following link
2013 Best Windows Server Backup Comparisons and Reviews
 
For physical boxes we used R1Soft, before we went full virtual that is. It's pretty good, and I think they finally pulled their heads out of their ass with pricing.

When we started using it, we were paying like $135/agent, it had got up to like $600/agent so we said fuck that. I think they got that sorted though, worth looking into, as it worked pretty well.
 
minc3d said:
For the server people out there, what is your favorite backup software for handling daily/weekly backup of your servers?

I am trying to find out what program has the best features and stability for backing up Windows Server machines that creates images which can be considered "bare metal restores"?

This software should ideally be able to spit out images or backup files that can be quickly loaded onto a server and take it from full corruption to useful state in as few hours as possible. Also, if the software can take backup images without bringing the system down from operation, that would be even better. Not sure if this is ideal or possible however.

I've been researching Backup Exec and Acronis Server edition, but it's tough to find head to head comparisons on these suites. Any insight would be appreciated!
Click to expand...

You may be better off trying Symantec System Recovery

It sounds a bit more like what you are looking for.

Full disclosure - I am part of the Backup Exec product mgmt team. While BE will do the job, I think SSR is a better fir for the imagine solution you want.

Cheers!
Matt Stephenson
@PackMatt73
 
Dell's premier backup solution AppAssure is hands down the best backup and disaster recovery solution available on the market. Period. Fastest RTO's, most functionality, and next generation technology that allows for full read/write access immediately following a crash. We're talking bare metal restore in seconds. I can monitor my environment from anywhere through the mobile user-interface, and if a server goes down, my users aren't even aware.

Interestingly, Backup Exec just purchased a ton of AppAssure licenses to try and figure out how they work.

It's not rocket science. AppAssure is by far the best for BU/DR.

Not to sound biased in anyway of course.
 
I actually have been testing Storagecraft's ShadowProtect Server 5 with a big customer of our's and have been quite impressed. MUCH faster and less issues than what I saw with Acronis Server. And I think it even edges BackupExec by a fair margin.

Unless I run into some crazy things, we will be purchasing ShadowProtect for our server needs going forward. Loving this product.
 
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