Scheduled overnight backup to image solution for smb

T

TopGun

Gawd
Joined
Jan 22, 2005
Messages
766
Hey guys,

I've got a quick question for you. Here at work we have a mix of Windows 7 64bit and XP 32 bit systems. I'm looking for a solution to make an image of each system on a regular scheduled interval at night. I can setup a VM on our server with a esata raid enclosure, get a nas, or get a cheap system with a few drives. I'm open to other ideas as well.

Thanks
-Justin
 
Ghost Cast Server should take care of it I would think, but it would cost money. Not sure what the budget is for this.

I could also think of clonezilla, but it's missing some pieces to make this a one stop shop
 
My suggestions:
ShadowProtect
Acronis
NovaStor NovaBACKUP (Disclaimer: I work for NovaStor)

Then just buy or build a decent machine to hold the backups and take care of your central management of the system.
 
I recommend you get in the habit of treating workstations as little more than thin clients. Any critical data should be stored centrally; your nodes ( workstations ) should simply be application stations.

That way a failed workstation doesn't kill critical data ( but will introduce some downtime ). It's far easier to manage a network when you have policies and procedures in place that make you workstations ultimately replaceable.
 
I am with XOR on this. All my clients have their important information stored centrally so they can use any workstation. It makes keeping backups so much simpler. If there is a problem with the workstation, it can be reimaged without fuss.
 
XOR != OR said:
I recommend you get in the habit of treating workstations as little more than thin clients.
Click to expand...

QFT

Use folder redirection and drive mapping in group policy, and if you can swing it, thinapp line of business apps. The loss of a workstation then becomes just pushing an OS image to a new workstation and joining it to the domain. Only an extra hour or so of labour versus 15 minutes with it being a thinclient.
 
AceXsmurF said:
My suggestions:
ShadowProtect
Acronis
NovaStor NovaBACKUP (Disclaimer: I work for NovaStor)

Then just buy or build a decent machine to hold the backups and take care of your central management of the system.
Click to expand...

Local imaging or not depends on your environment. Some excellent points in this thread.. if you do need to do imaging I know the ones quoted here support it and at least Acronis has a trial version available.
 
We have a standard image for all our workstations. Their My Documents is mapped to a network drive on the server and GPO takes care of printers, mapped drives, security settings, etc. The only thing we have to worry about is the random one off program and the one off label printers. Everything else is on Citrix as well. We tell people not to store shit on their desktop, but we'll copy over their desktop and favourites and signature to a new machine. On a basic build, it takes us 5-10 minutes to swap a machine.
 
Oh man those 5-10 minute machine swaps are great, but getting people into the habit of not droping stuff on their desktop / my docs was painful. I finally gave up at one point and just redirected everyone's my documents to the server. Life was easy again.
 
calvinj said:
Oh man those 5-10 minute machine swaps are great, but getting people into the habit of not droping stuff on their desktop / my docs was painful. I finally gave up at one point and just redirected everyone's my documents to the server. Life was easy again.
Click to expand...

Every 3 months we send out a mass email to everyone reminding them to only save stuff to their My Documents. Some listen, most don't. Another technician at work gets so pissed that people don't that he doesn't even bother copying over some people's stuff on swaps. It takes 10 extra minutes tops to do so I just do it. Putting the Outlook signatures back is just a nice touch.
 
I'm lazy, and therefore pick and choose my battles. I fought the desktop war long and hard, and eventually admitted defeat; it's mapped to the server just like the documents folder.

I send out an annual policy reminder to folks that informs them that any media or compression files stored in their documents or desktops are not backed up, but otherwise I don't fiddle with it that much.
 
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