February 2007 - Posts
I’m trying to refine my home backup strategy. With three laptops and two desktops I’m looking for an easier solution. I’ve given up on Windows OneCare because of its inability to backup to a network share despite its claims and its outright refusal to backup to an internal drive… I’ll explain later. The integrated Vista backup doesn’t allow detailed selection of what and what not to backup so that won’t work. I’m looking for something that meets these requirements:
1) Automated backup for each physical hardware device.
2) Explorer view to select folders to include and the ability to exclude files and folders with wildcards.
3) Compression.
4) Retention of multiple file versions. Many people don’t get this but RAID and folder synchronization won’t help you if the file becomes corrupted or you save a change you didn’t want.
5) I don’t care if I have to reinstall the OS, except maybe the Media Center because of the DRM issues so there isn’t a hard requirement for an imaging solution.
6) Automatic grooming/pruning of older backup sets if space is needed for the current backup.
Retrospect Professional for home use is server based with agents installed on the computers you want to backup. I like this because the entire network gets backed up as a set and the processing is done on one computer. I’m running a trial on Vista so it doesn’t require Windows Server. The problem with it is the method of file selection. It is difficult to pick and choose what gets backed and complex exclusions are difficult. I really want to optimize my backup space.
The forth coming Windows Home Server sounds promising but I’d rather not have to stand up another box that is solely dedicated to Home Server.
What strategy do you use?
-Chris
This might save you some frustration if you are looking to take advantage of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 for some enhanced dashboard reporting action. You cannot change an existing native mode report database to be SharePoint integrated. Instead, you must create a new report database. Since, I already had a “ReportServer” db setup I figured I would call it “SharePointReportServer” but that didn’t work and it gave me an error. So, I figured I would try “MyClientReportServer” and that didn’t work. At this point, I’m a little frustrated and since I’m not a PG2 guy I start questioning my SharePoint configuration because the integrated mode requires access to the WSS object model but that is pretty fundamental so I quickly ruled out any issues related to my lack of SPS skills. Back in the Reporting Services Configuration Manager there is additional detail about the error and the error is caused by looking for a database that does not exist. In my “MyClientReportServer” instance, it is creating a new “MyClientReportServer” database which does exist and its associated TempDB database but when the Configuration Manager looks for it to perform additional acitivities it is stripping off “ReportServer” and only looking for “MyClient”. Goodness… like no one else in the world is going to try and add “ReportServer” to the end of their “ReportServer” database. Using “MyClientReports” works just fine though.
SQL Server 2005 SP2 is out, so go grab it! It has some interesting new features related to SharePoint 2007 and its ability integrate with SQL Server Reporting Services. You can create powerful dashboards in SharePoint using the Report Viewer which is filter aware. I’ll get a quick walk-through up soon.
Here is a quick for heads up for the overclockers out there. Don’t install the new P25 BIOS from EVGA for the 680i motherboard. It kills stability, so overclocking by even the smallest margins is no longer possible. WTF? Prior to this, I thought the P24 BIOS made my system slower and I thought to myself “surely, BIOS updates are supposed to be better”, so I let it go. Anyway, I went back to P23 and I have my 800 MHz RAM at a 1 GHz, my 1066 MHz FSB at 1.2 GHz, and my Quad Core 2.66 GHz at 3.3 GHz for a modest 20% OC.
-CP
You know you are having a bad week when your Virtual DVD drive fails.
-CP
…still sucks. Since I was in the beta, I have a free year for three of my PCs but I’m not impressed. They didn’t resolve any of the issues I reported regarding backup. Unfortunately, I’m unable to backup to a network share because it says the share is unavailable. However, from the same computer I’m able to run the backup utility included with Vista without issue. Finally, it doesn’t support Vista x64 so one of my boxes is left to fend for itself.