Part 1 – Hello Free backup, I never knew you so well
In a previous life I spent my days working with clients and using the native backup solution from Windows “NTBACKUP”
Now a lot of people look down upon NTBACKUP as the poor man’s backup. Stripped down, hurt.
Let’s take a second look at NTBACKUP. In Server 2003 with NTBACKUP you had the following features
Licensing cost – NIL (Free to use with the O/S)
Open File option – Built in (Yes, thanks to Shadow Copy you can backup many if not all open files)
Exchange agent – Built in
Media supported – Tapes and Physical Media
Ability to Email logs – programmable
You have to remember that “NTBACKUP” is really just a stripped down version of BackupExec (owned by Symantec now) and really ISN’T that bad of a backup.
You can run it from a command line, the configuration files are pure text (and easy to edit) and if you leverage just a few of the features built into Windows you, as an Administrator can have a backup system capable of emailing, printing and archiving logs.
“But I have an SQL Server!” (I hear a voice in the background scream)
And SQL has it’s OWN built in backup which can be scheduled and will co exist with NTbackup.
So feeling a little less nervous? Good
Follow along with me as I try to lightly touch on leveraging the built in Backup solutions provided by Microsoft to extend your abilities and pad your wallet with savings.
Sean
The Energized Tech
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