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From: Al Williams on 3 Mar 2010 14:40
As Larry said, SBS2008 backup can be run during work hours and works better
as an image based system. If 2008 isn't in your near future I would
consider moving to an image based backup system like ShadowProtect (or
Acronis) and USB drives. Much faster than NTbackup or BE and should work
with your iSCSI system (check first).

We use Shadowprotect SBS (SP) on SBS2003, and have done full restores very
quickly and tested hardware independent restores (HIR) without hassles which
makes me sleep better as I have a working/tested plan if the HW goes south.
I am able to fully backup 100 GB in about an hour and incrementals run every
2 hours after that and take only seconds generally. Highly recommended.

http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_SBS.php

Note if you do try it out make sure it doesn't run at the same time as the
other backup programs - they can interfere. Now that we've switched to SP I
only use NTBackup to run a systemstate backups once a week, SP does
everything else (including exchange-aware (needs a registry change) and SQL
database backups).

--
Allan Williams




Andy Roxburgh wrote:
> Hi Larry and Cliff - thanks for your replies, very interesting.
>
> Although we're a small business (30 ish people) our IT load has become
> pretty high in recent months, to the point where the SBS server is
> being used about 18 hours a day, and for the other 6 hours it's doing
> backups.
> Firstly there's just no time to take it down for maintenance any more
> - windows update reboots, hardware configs etc.
>
> And secondly, though I've never had a significant problem with SBS
> boxes (the worst were repeated BSODs due to a faulty SCSI card, and a
> double drive failure on a RAID 5), it's dawning on me how much we
> rely on a single SBS box, and I'm getting questions about high
> availability.
> So if I were to keep an image of our current SBS server, to be spun
> up in the event of a failure, I'd need a separate licence for that? I
> didn't realise that.
>
> Perhaps I just need to face the fact that we've outgrown SBS....
>
> Andy
>
>
>
>
>
> "Larry Struckmeyer[SBS-MVP]" <lstruckmeyer(a)mis-wizards.com> wrote in
> message news:4e683515b66c8cc87518b19c766(a)news.microsoft.com...
>> Hi Andy:
>>
>> What he said.
>>
>> I don't very often do this, for/to Cliff or anyone else, but I
>> agree. I have supported SBS since the very first version, and have
>> *never* lost an SBS server for more than about 3 hours. "It just
>> works", to coin a phrase, and if installed on quality hardware with
>> very good power protection - meaning a quality UPS such as the APC
>> oro Eaton line in the 1500 VA true sine wave class or better, you
>> should not have significant downtime.
>>
>> As for "spinning up" the SBS on another box, you will need either a
>> separate license or SA (software assurance) for the existing license
>> to validate such, be it a "cold spare" or some other term for that.
>>
>> -
>> Larry
>> Please post the resolution to your
>> issue so others may benefit
>> -
>> Get Your SBS Health Check at
>> www.sbsbpa.com
>>
>>
>>> To answer your first question, I can only speculate, but the
>>> difference between the appliance being in SMB mode vs iSCSI mode is
>>> authentication. My guess is that the appliance is just not very
>>> good at authenticating access, which SMB would require, so you see a
>>> significant performance drop. Access is only as good as the
>>> software implementing it, after all. iSCSI is leaving a lot more
>>> negotiation up to SBS, which is built specifically for such things.
>>>
>>> As for your second question, the short answer is that SBS targets
>>> small businesses and, as such, you are usually talking about a
>>> budget where full high-availability is simply prohibitively
>>> expensive. As such, SBS wasn't really built for such use. With
>>> that said, a good server with dual power supplies, a good disk
>>> subsystem with RAID, and a good warranty (many top tier companies
>>> will overnight a defective part) and you don't *have* significant
>>> downtime with a server for this to be an issue. DAS is perfectly
>>> acceptable in most instances. If your business truly cannot afford
>>> any downtime then SBS is probably not the right product...even if
>>> you are technically in the user/computer limits of the product.
>>>
>>> -Cliff
>>>
>>> "Andy Roxburgh" <nospam(a)nospam.com> wrote in message
>>> news:OpdrCUVuKHA.732(a)TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>>>
>>>> Hi, I need some advice.
>>>>
>>>> I've got a Thecus N8800Pro Storage Applicance, and a Windows SBS
>>>> 2003 Server. I want to hold my important business files on the
>>>> applicance so that it can be accessed by the other users of the
>>>> network. I tried this by connecting the applicance to the SBS Server
>>>> via
>>>> iSCSI, and then sharing the folders. It worked well, but if the
>>>> server goes down for whatever reason then we lose access to these
>>>> files.
>>>>
>>>> So I tried putting the N8800Pro into SMB mode, and sharing the
>>>> folders directly from the applicance (bypassing the SBS server).
>>>> However, now access to the files is really slow, which I don't
>>>> really understand - I mean I know iSCSI is faster than SMB, but
>>>> with the SBS Server removed from the data path it should be around
>>>> the same speed if not quicker surely? After all the sharing at
>>>> between the SBS and the users' desktops is done by SMB isn't it?
>>>>
>>>> So I don't really understand that.
>>>>
>>>> Firstly - why would that be?
>>>> Secondly - can I use two iSCSI initiators on different servers to
>>>> access
>>>> an iSCSI target? So I could, for instance, have a server image of
>>>> SBS 2003
>>>> standing by, and spin it up when my usual SBS 2003 server goes
>>>> down, and
>>>> still have fast access to the data. Is this possible? What do other
>>>> people
>>>> do about server redundancy and data redundancy with SBS?
>>>> Any help appreciated.
>>>>
>>>> Andy


From: Leythos on 3 Mar 2010 21:33
In article <#EGj6nsuKHA.3536(a)TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl>, nospam(a)nospam.com
says...
> Although we're a small business (30 ish people) our IT load has become
> pretty high in recent months, to the point where the SBS server is being
> used about 18 hours a day, and for the other 6 hours it's doing backups.
>
> Firstly there's just no time to take it down for maintenance any more -
> windows update reboots, hardware configs etc.
>

We have a number of clients that run 3 shifts 7d/week and the servers
often run for months at a time without updates. If you have properly
secured your network, your servers, your workstations, there is nothing
that says you have to apply server updates just because they were issued
- you should be evaluating them for need and severity, not just blindly
applying them because MS classifies them as "Critical" or "Security".

As for Backups, if you're on SBS 03, you can do multiple backups, at
different times, instead of one large backup. You can still manually
schedule backups while using the SBS Backup Wizard - you exclude from
the Wizard backup those folders/drives you're doing manually.

You could also do like I do - I create a BATCH FILE that has all of the
backup commands, for the different backups, so that each one runs in
sequence - and we backup to removable drives or a fixed drive and then
use the tape system to backup that drive.

I've run several 70 user SBS environments for close to 6 months without
a reboot, since they are secured behind real firewalls and we don't let
users install anything - we even disable USB/CD/DVD ports on their
computers....

--
You can't trust your best friends, your five senses, only the little
voice inside you that most civilians don't even hear -- Listen to that.
Trust yourself.
spam999free(a)rrohio.com (remove 999 for proper email address)
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