Ok so I've been doing a lot of research on the web and talking to a lot of vendors and IT consulting companies about finding the right backup software for our business here. However, I'm sort of stuck on Symantec Backup Exec 11d and at $8k, that's a little steep. The next one down doesn't really cut all the things we need (Acronis Enterprise Server). What I need are Disk2Disk backup, Open file access, SQL 2005 and Exchange 2007 granular backup, regular file backup and OS backup (almost like bare-metal restore type). Online backup is the hotest trend now but we have too much data to backup. Phone call recordings are above 200GB and every order is generating a PDF file so that's a lot of files and size. Any Geeks out there know what their company uses so I can research those softwares? I've still got a few more IT consulting firms to hear back from so I'll see if they have any new options. I think our price range is around $5,000 for software. I'm building the server right now and it will have 2 SATA2 hot-swap drive sleds with 8 500gb drives to rotate and keep offsite. Thanks, Russell
Don't forget to look into a fireproof safe and/or offsite storage. I used to use ARCserve in a past life; I think Computer Associates bought it but have no idea about its current price point or capabilities. It was quite good.
How many servers? What is the total size you need backed up? We used ARCserver in our formar life. Now we use Netbackup 5.1 mp5. We back up 24/7 over 150 servers. Some disk to disk, some disk to tape. We user Iron Mountain for our off site storage. The SQL 2005 and Exchange 2007 pieces are more then likely going to cost extra. I would highly recomend that you use the SQL 2005 backup to flat file and back that up like any other file. Restoring a SQL database using the backup console can get messy. It will also save you money. For the Exchange 2007 piece, you will just have to bite the bullet and purchase that add on. Really look at if it is worth doing a brick level backup. It can take a lot longer. It just depends on how you have your exchange server(s) setup. Fill us in on some more details about your enviroment.
The server environment is pretty simple: Dedicated Exchange 2007 Server Dedicated MSSQL 2005 Dedicated Phone server (3x250gb Raid5) (call recordings are at 250GBs and growing at 5gbs/day) Dedicated DC/DNS Dedicated Web/PHP server Dedicated vTiger/Fax/Blackberry Enterprise Server Dedicated scripts server (runs a tremendous amounts of automation scripts) Dedicated file server (4x500gb Raid5) (stores basically everything, half of which will need backing) Dedicated Crystal reports/Quickbooks/Accounting server 1 or 2 other misc servers doing odd things which may not need backing. So roughly 10 servers that will need backing. The call recordings will need to be archived and moved off-site to a bank vault, all the other things will need backing up regularly. What we are thinking of is to do a 5-day rotating disk backup for everything except call recordings. Call recordings can go on a disk of its own. This way, even with two 500GB drives, daily we can backup 1TB of data. Later we can put in 1TB disks when data grows beyond 500GB compressed, etc. Online solutions like LiveVault and other resellers of such is seriously expensive. $1,000/month for like 400GBs isn't worth it for our company size. Plus most of the apps that come with these services can't do archiving. Remote DataBackup (RDB), doesn't do archiving to hot-swap drives as the indexing purges if the drive is removed. I've seen ARCServe's prices and they are similar or more then Symantec. I'm putting together a sandbox to install Symantec's trial 11d and try it out. Maybe I can learn more and convince CEO to go with it and stop trying to find excuses. I just wanted some more ideas and names I could try or research to maybe have a good idea. As for the SQLServer agent, we're also thinking the same thing. SQL's DB right now is ~7GBs and we are backing up from the SQL's agent. Restoring isn't too long either and we will most likely stay with that. Also for OS backup and restores, is it worth worrying about that or just do data backup and incase OS corruption occurs and mirrors are useless, just manually install OS/Apps then restore data? Thanks for the info.