Some Notes on the Machines

When restoring a volume in StorageCraft, there are several choices to make. Here is an excellent document.

http://www.storagecraft.com/support/forum/what-restore-choices-do-i-make

Here’s a new one:

http://www.qtdtools.de/page.php?seite=0&sub=1&lang=en

Appears very good, does email notification and other helpful things. Nice quality GUI.

Here is Windows and Linux software:

http://backuppc.sourceforge.net/info.html

which will backup a system across network to server, via Windows share, tar over ssh/rsh/nfs, or rsync.

Windows Backup on Server 2008, is very different than previous backup tools provided by Microsoft. It is block-level, meaning that it handles only whole volumes (drives) at once. But it works very well, it has much lower impact on resources. It uses VSS as its basis.

Data difficult to identify, but useful for setting up monitoring, follow.

Service name: Block Level Backup Engine Service
Executable (on 32-bit, default): “C:\Windows\system32\wbengine.exe”
Command-line utility (runs from elevated CMD): wbadmin

Here is a very good file synchronizer, free of charge to all, which does Volume Shadow Copy for locked files:

http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/index.php

This page has lots of good steps to take:

http://www.storagecraft.com/kb/questions.php?questionid=244

An excellent article is here:

http://www.petri.co.il/backup_exchange_2000_2003_with_ntbackup.htm

This works, to back up C drive to \\DEST_SERVER\E$\SHARE, if disk2vhd.exe is within the path:

REM
REM A simple backup system using disk2vhd
REM
REM version 1.3, by J.E.B., 2011-02-22
REM
REM requires 'disk2vhd.exe' to be in the path
REM

setLocal EnableDelayedExpansion

REM "DRIVES" can be one drive identifier with colon, multiple separated by spaces,
REM or asterisk for all.  
REM "DEST" can be a drive letter or a UNC.

SET DRIVES="*"
SET DEST="\\SERVER\SHARE"

REM Keep most recent 4 VHD files in DEST, delete the rest

for /f "skip=4 tokens=* delims= " %%a in ('dir/b/o-d %DEST%\*.VHD') do (
del %DEST%\%%a
)

REM Backup to VHD

C:
cd \
DISK2VHD %DRIVES% %DEST%\D2VBK--%date:~-10,2%%date:~-7,2%%date:~-4,4%_TS.VHD

The following:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

creates one or more Microsoft VHDs, suitable for use in Hyper-V and Virtual PC, from the drive(s) and/or RAID volume(s) of a running server or workstation.  Server 2003 / XP and up.

If you run into this, stop the ImageManager service, and delete the file “ImageManager.mdb” from the ImageManager program’s folder.  (Don’t touch ImageManager.clean.mdb!)  Then restart the service.  ImageManager.mdb will be rebuilt, and all will be well.