I'm supporting a small business with 4 XP desktops, 2 Windows 7 desktops and 1 Server 2008 (R1) which is the file/print server, domain controller and contains Active Directory.
I've tested regular Windows backup as well as a commercial backup program which has a Bare Metal Restore feature. I thought with Windows server backup I could virtualize the VHD in VirtualBox or VMWare if something should ever happen to the physical server but haven't been able to do it.
I guess the main question is, how do other people establish solid backups for entire environments? The desktop's My Documents
are all on the server, but the desktops/favorites are not. Maybe I should redirect these folders as well, but I'm concerned about overloading the server which may be utilized as a terminal server to offset price of buying new computers as the office hires more personel (specs- 10GB RAM in a TS200V and 2 hard drives on RAID1).
Any ideas for best backup practise (preferably free)?
I should add that existing backups (incremental) are presently totalling around 300GB (server and desktops) and being stored on a 2TB NAS device.
Due to the hours of configuration going into every desktop, I'm looking for a solution that will backup the entire operating system as they use several custom apps that take quite some time to configure from scratch should I ever needed to reinstall the operating systems.