Backup software

When your backup is running and encounters a file which is "open" (some other task is using the file), the backup software will typically do one of two things:

1) It will ignore the file, and the file will not be on your backup.

2) It will backup the file as well as it can. The file will be on your backup media, but some data may be bad (for example if a database process was in the process of updating an index when backup came through).

When you try to restore these files from your backup media, the associated programs may or may not be able (or willing) to correctly read the files. For example, with Oracle, there are multiple pieces of a database, and if the time stamps are not identical on all of them, the program claims that the database is corrupt and refuses to open it. Look for this and similar problems with Exchange and SQL server.

Office files present a different problem. Word, for example, makes a temporary file, and writes changes to the original file on close. Your backup will not save the changes. No backup software will really deal well with this -- your users need to not leave files open overnight.

Because of the possible consequences of not being able to recover database files, your backup software MUST be able to properly deal with these files. Many vendors of backup software have add-ons for various types of files to handle these problems. (Some of these actually log into the database and read record-by-record.) You must let your vendor know what types of packages you run, and you need assurance from your vendor that the files you have will be properly backed up.

Disaster recovery refers to how much work it takes to restore things if your disks are lost and replaced with blank disks. This may be more or less important to you depending on your business, but count on it taking at least as long for a full restore as for a full backup.

Good luck.

I use veritas workstation backup software. It came with my tape drive 10/20GB Travan tapes. Overall, very inexpensive and just what I needed for my organization. What they mean by online backups is the ability to backup multiple machines from one device. For instance, as I said, my tape device is built into my workstation. But from there, I can backup anything I want from my servers or any other machine on the network.
As was previously stated, open files are not dealt with very well. That iswhy backups are scheduled for the middle of the night when most people are not on their systems in the office. As for what type of files you are backing up...it doesn't matter, point the software to the directory and choose which files you want and it will do it...it is as simple as using network neighbourhood to map to different files on different machines.
Good luck!

Mike

If you're backing up mission-critical data from always-on apps like Exchange and Oracle, you've absolutely got to have some way of handling them. As one of the previos posters said, most enterprise-class backup solutions offer some kind of add-on functionality. I'm using Veritas Backup Exec, which has an Open File option (extra cost) to handle basic files like .docs and general OS files. If you don't have the Open File add-on, it will either skip open files, wait 30 seconds for the file to close, or back it up, with or without a file lock to prevent changes during the backup. Depending on the file in question and why it's open, one of those setting might work, but not for Exchange, SQL, Oracle, or anything similar.

For Exchange, I bought the Exchange Option for Backup Exec. It works flawlessly, and has a couple of options on how to handle the transaction log files: full backup, differential, incremental, etc, depending on how you handle log file storage on your Exchange server.

I don't have any personal knowledge of Veritas' SQL and Oracle agents for BackupExec, but based on my experience with the product as a whole, and the Exchange agent and Open File option, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it if it fits your budgetneeds.

Greetings,

ArcserverIT software should help you out for all your requirment for the backup. I am using the same since from 1 year and do not find any problem. Make sure u get the open files backup agent software also with the arcserverIT kit.

Regards,
Harish.C.

I would add that it really is not wise to be as cheap as possible when it comes to a backup solution. You may pay one or even a few hundred less now, but what's it going to cost you down the road if a drive fails and you have a half-baked backup that takes you a day or more to rebuild and still are missing some data? Care to spend around $5000 for professional data recovery that may or may not be able to save anything? I have experience with Ultrabac for NT and Backup Exec on Netware and could recommend either one. Some others that I do NOT have experience with but you may want to consider, Novabac- www.novabac.com
Retrospect- www.dantz.com
Also, I'm planning on checking out Novastor's Instantrecovery to burn drive images to a CD. This would not be the same as a traditional backup as you would have to bring down the server and swap CD's while the backup runs, but that also bypasses the open file issue.
Maybe run it once a quarter, then if you have a disaster you simply replacethe drive, pop in your recovery CD and a half hour later your up & running.

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