Bare bones backup / restore for single Win 2003 server

Question

I have a single server, Win 2003 Server and would like to setup a system to be able to perform a bare bones restore if needed. (just plug in a cd or smth and get everything back).
Ideally the backup could be performed while the is powered so that i don't have to support downtime during this, and in order to restore i would reboot and use some sort of liveCD
Any ideas on this, software and all... ?

(backup will be done to a remote FTP server with plenty of bandwidth).

Answer 1

I'm not sure if I understood your question properly, but I'll try to answer anyway. I think you're talking about a bare metal restore. If you are, then you will have to restart any OS just to do a restore. If you don't want that, then maybe you are talking about volume shadow copy service.

You can do this using the built-in NTBACKUP software of Windows 2003. You simple select "Automated System Recovery" and it will make a full backup your system (while it is serving to your users) to a disk you specify and then it will as you to insert a floppy disk that will serve as a boot disk.

If in the case that you need to do this, just plug the backup disk and insert the floppy and then boot it all up.

Answer 2

NTBackup will give you the full backup of the entire system. It will create a huge file. You can offsite this file via FTP, but NTBackup will not work with an FTP URL as its target. You need to copy it to local disk first to do a restore.

Answer 3

The vendor's procedure to achieve is either;

A.

1. use the built-in system backup
2. do a fresh install on your bare metal, bring it up to the right service pack level

3. restore system backup

   B. maintain a system image, and roll it out when needed. A bit of overkill for an individual or a non-virtual server, as keeping the image up to date takes work.

But what you seem to want is more of a unix-style block-level partition backup, which requires the system to go offline during the backup. This can be achieved with many tools such as dd, but less efficient things sych as norton ghost might be your cup of tea.

Answer 4

http://www.symantec.com/business/backup-exec-system-recovery-server-edition You can use Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 Server Edition

It can restore baremetal (similar or different hardware), convert the backup sets to Vmware, HyperV or XEN based virtual hard disks.

I know that it stores offsite backup copy to a ftp location (if configured properly and appropriate firewall ports allowed) - I haven't done a ftp restore, but you can try, few things to note :

a) When you do a baremetal restore, you need to boot with the BESR SRD (system recovery disc), once that is loaded and network drivers loaded (most famous NICS are supported or you can add drivers), I would assume (NOT Sure) that as long as it can browse the ftp from within the SRD environment, it should be able to restore.

They offer a trial version (full functional) so you can test it out.
Hope that helps