Backup Best Practice

[scouser]

Hi Guys. I have taken over management of a windows server environment.
The servers have been upgraded from NT to 2003 Standard.

The company uses veritas backup exec for windows servers 9.1.

The System State is backed up. Question.
What is best policy regards the WINNT directory? Should I back up AD only?
They currently backup EVERYTHING? I think this is overkill.

Also any thoughts on backing up exchange (multiple storage groups / mailbox stores).
Thanks,
Phil.

 

[Minkey]

I believe you could be thinking on the right track but I must warn you I don't know a lot about server/ active directory but the way I understand it is if your using active directory your profile (desktop/ my doc etc.) will always be retained and a backup of this would enable a profile to be restored.

By backing up the WINNT folder you would be saving any changes to this folder which is of course the ideal thing in a home environment but in a corporate environment this should be managed by your group policies ? In fact this could be security risk, lets say some one has picked up a virus that makes changes to your system files (which the majority do) then you'll backup the virus and never be rid of it.

This is the way I understand it (basically) but it all depends on the way your clients are managed with regards the OS.

If you want info about exchange have a look here. There are articles on the left hand navigation pane or you can download a guide. (This link is for 2003 for a different version go to MS Technet and do a search there)

As I said I'm no expert on this so may have got it (_._) about (.) but hope this helps in some small way.

 

[scouser]

Reply

Thanks for replying. I have been away on holiday (hence the delay!!).
I will take a look at the links.
Thanks,
Phil.