Vitaliy wrote:

> Ok, so let me get this straight: you have workstations, and you have this 
> one server running Win2k?

Yes. The way I have it set up is not a centralized office, managing a dozen
workstations from a central location: all workstations (only a few) are
"managed" by their users (only two :). The server is only a file server
(and cvsnt and some other stuff), not a domain controller.

> Do you backup *everything*, including the system files? 

Somehow I was under the impression that you already knew TrueImage. It is
mainly a sector-based partition backup tool, not a file-based data backup
tool. I use it to back up full partitions, including system files. The
disadvantage is that the base backups are bigger (they include also
installable files) and the incremental backups also (it seems that NTFS
moves around some sectors, so even some unchanged files seem to get backed
up in an incremental backup). The main advantage is that a restore of a
backup is bootable and identical to the state where the system was at the
point of a backup -- no reinstalling dozens of updates, trying to fiddle
with configurations that didn't get backed up, etc. A secondary advantage
from this is that there's less headache connected with finding everything
that needs to be backed up (which IMO on a Windows system is a nightmare).
And the extra space required is only a few GB -- even multiplied by several
backups and several drives in the backup scheme that's only a few bucks.

> How would you get the server back up and running, in case of a disk
> crash?

I assume you're talking about the system disk (not the backup disk -- they
are separate in my case). Install a new disk, pop in the TrueImage boot CD,
boot the system from the CD, tell it to restore a backup to disk, select
the last backup, let it run, reboot.

> What if we already have a server running RedHat, and just put another
> server right next to it, running Win2K and TrueImage? Or is there a more
> straightforward way?

The way I'm running things (managed by the workstations), you don't need
another server. You just put another disk in your server, set up a Samba
share (or local ftp access), and use it to store your workstation backups.
(You probably would need a different backup program for the server, but I'm
sure there are several possibilities to run a backup on Linux.)

AFAIK, TrueImage permits control of the backups of several workstations
from one central server. If this is what you want, then you possibly can
control the backups from one (your?) workstation, but still store them on
your Linux server. (I've never done the remote control thing, so you'd have
to check the TrueImage manual for this.)

(I'm assuming you're going with the lower cost TrueImage Workstation, not
the rather expensive server versions. Note that I don't have the latest
version; there may be some differences.)

> [...] and even in case of fire there's always the off-site drive...

Alan just mentioned a fire safe. This could be a place to store the
external drive that's local in any given week between sync runs.

Gerhard

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