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Home > How to configure backups and perform restores in Windows Server 2008 |
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Solution: You need to understand the requirements for recovering your server and data in your organization, most likely dictated by service-level agreements (SLA). SLAs define the amounts of time allowed for the recovery of your servers and what data needs to be available. Another item they define is retention of data, or how long to keep your data. In some environments, you may need to retain data for up to seven years for auditing purposes. (And believe me: The auditors will show up and expect to have access to the data.) The first step in managing your backups is to devise a backup policy. You need to consider the different types of backups needed, which depends on your organization's infrastructure. The following are some of the different backups to consider:
In this book we cover only Windows Server 2008 system state (ASR) and file system data backups and restores using the backup utility within Windows. In a real-world scenario, you would probably use a third-party tool, such as IBM's Tivoli Enterprise or Symantec's NetBackup. Usually these third-party tools also allow you to set the number of versions of a file you want to keep. Say that you work with your business division and come up with the following SLAs for server and data recovery:
Keeping these SLAs in mind, you need to make sure you have a daily backup of all data files and system state. You also need to have a plan that incorporates five-year retention of data, possibly on a monthly archive backup. And you need to consider your space requirements for this and also the media used, as some tape media may not have a good storage life. If you think about this for a bit, you will realize that a daily backup of all data will cause you to duplicate quite a bit of data on your backups every day. This would waste storage and also require a large backup window (that is, time to run the backup). Ideally, you want to run the backups during a time when server utilization is at its lowest and finish prior to the start of the business day. Making incremental backups of data is the solution to this issue. You can perform full data backups on the weekend (usually when you can afford to have a larger backup window) and then perform incremental backups during the week. Incremental backups back up only the data that changes since the last backup. The drawback to this solution, in the past, was the time it would take to restore the data; you would first have to restore the last full backup and then restore the incremental backups. With Windows Server 2008, you no longer need to restore from multiple backups. Instead, you just choose the date of the backup you would like to restore. Some third-party backup solutions use what is called "forever incremental" technology. This technology allows you to set your backups to back up only what has changed, and it also keeps active the data that has not changed. When the unchanged data remains active, the restore time will be shorter because you will need to perform only one restore—not restore the full backup and then all the differentials. Many backup solutions back up only what has changed on the block level of a file. Windows Server 2008 also backs up on the block level. Backing up on the block level only backs up identical data once, even if the data can be found on different files. An example of this would be a company letterhead. The letterhead is on many files but is only backed up once with pointers to each file that uses the letterhead. This technology improves space utilization. Now let's look at how to configure Windows Server 2008 to back up your data files and system state on a schedule:
If you had chosen to do a one-time backup, you would be given the option Enable System Recovery at this point to include the system state. If this box is unchecked, you are not forced to back up the volume that contains the OS.
If you choose to do a one-time backup, you have some additional options:
When launching the Windows Server Backup utility, you may receive the notice "Windows Server Backup is not installed on this computer." You then need to install the feature from Server Manager. If the command-line feature is selected, you need to also install Windows PowerShell. Here's how you recover a file that has been backed up:
You can now navigate to the file you intend to recover. Obviously, you needed to have backed up a file or folder to see it available for recovery here. For more information on Windows Server 2008 backup capabilities, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770266.aspx. In this chapter, we have really just touched the surface when it comes to managing the Windows Server 2008 infrastructure. The information in this chapter provides a good foundation, and as you become more involved with managing your environment, you will find many other tools, both native Microsoft and third-party tools, that will help you with managing Windows Server 2008.
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