Windows Small Business Server 2011 installation and configuration – Part 7 configuring “Configure Server Backup”
Go directly to SBS 2011 index file. With links to all articles from this serie.
After we are finished with Part 6 configuring “Move server storage (data) to other partition(s)” and moved all data to another partition. We go back to “Home” page of the SBS console and choose for “Configure Server Backup”.
The wizard start with some information about what we are going to do.
In this screen you will see your attached external disk drives. Because I have installed SBS 2011 in a Hyper-V virtual machine I have to check “Show all valid internal and external backup destinations” so I can use a special created disk for backup purposes.
Advice is to use a minimum of 2 or better more disks for your backup, so you can always keep minimal one disk away from the server or better out of the office for something happens with the server or building.
Note that the disk you choose will be formatted and can only be used for backup storage and nothing else. If you use SCSI vhd files you can evenly hotswap the virtual drives from your SBS 2011 virtual machine.
If you use your SBS 2011 as a virtual machine you can also attach your usb disk connected to your host, read here how to attach your usb disk.
Give your disk a meaningful label. You will see here all disk you checked in the previous window.
Choose the partitions you would like to backup.
Choose your backup schedule, you can create it the way you like.
An overview of your selections.
You get a warning because now your disks will be formatted and all data on the disks is lost.
Depending on the size, type and number of the disks it could take some time.
Your server backup is now configured.
You can find the backup job under Backup and Server Storage and then the tab Backup.
This is also the place where you can change the backup job, schedule, selected partitions, remove or add backup disks and restore a backup job.
I would write something about restoring a backup job later.
For how to do a full server restore click here.
Go back to Part 6 configuring “Move server storage (data) to other partition(s)”
Continue with Part 8 Configure “POP3 connector”
Tags: backup, installation, sbs 2011, sbs console
Our SBS 2011 server has 2TB of available space though we only use about 100GB between system, Exchange, data etc. Thus our backup is about 100GB how big should our backup drive be? Does the backup drive space have to match the available space of the server which in our case is 2TB though we only have total 100GB of space used? Thank you.
As far as I know this is not necesarry, I just check my virtual test environment and I have 3 partitions, 80GB, 20GB and 100GB and my backup drive is 100GB I backup all 3 partitions without any problem.
So I should say this will not be any problem
Question about backups…
If either the SBS 2011 or the hardware decided to have an ill fate due to an act of Murphy, would I be able to take my USB drive with all the backups on and plug it into a clean install of SBS 201, restore it and all my settings, certificates, emails, etc. be like it was before the act of Murphy?
Is it possible to run a 2nd SBS 2011 as a backup? Imagine a RAID 1 but with 2x SBS 2011 running on different hardware. So if one went down, there would be no down time for the company.
The built-in sbs backup creates full server image backups so restoring a backup would always restore a complete server, so you cannot just restore parts, always everything. Please note if you would like to restore to other hardware the raid controller would be detected there is no option to load a driver during restore. So if you have doubt please try before you need the abbillity and it won’t work.
About having a second server as backup, there are specilized programs that could sync data from one server to another, this is mostly for virtual machines it just sync all data and keeps a complete replica on another server. Another option could be to have 2 servers with shared storage and build a hyper-v failover cluster. So if one server fails the other takes the tasks over.
I didn’t know that it does a full image. That is good to know 🙂
We picked up 4 new/used Dell Precision that are exactly the same hardware wise for cheap. So if one goes out, I can always just grab someone else’s Precison and get the server up and running again. It is better to have one person mad than have a mob chasing after you.
I have experimented with VMWare in the past and lost everything that was on the harddrive because it was making bad sectors. After that experience, I just stay away from virtual machines all together.
Once again, you have been a great help!!
Hi, when the backup disk is full what happens, I dont suppose it deletes the oldest thus to make room?
As far as I know when the disk is full it would automatic clean the oldest backups. I have not yet ran into this issue, so if this is not the case please correct me if I am wrong.
I have restored a physical 2008sbs to a new drive array using the DVD and builtin backups successfully. When on VM do you simply create a new VM and then attache the backup drives in the same way, then use the DVD to restore? Cool article, thanks!
If I got your question right, and you want to restore a virtual installed SBS 2011 server. It is right you just create a new VM start the VM from your dvd or iso file. And perform the same procedure as for a physical restore.
Hi Ronny
i made a full volume recovery in windows backup, and now i have a plenty of versions, it takes lot of space, do you knows how to kill old versions backup not just system state but the full backup versions, i have done some research in Google but i am little bit confuse, can you show me how please, Thank you !
Windows Server backup is designed to manage the storage space and the way that the backups append it wont take lightly to anything being removed manually. This is a really good article http://goo.gl/SuWvk
What you’d be better off doing is making the partition that you use for backups smaller so that not so many “copies” are kept and then you can expand it as you need to in the future.
As far as I know, it just keeps all versions and when there is not enough disk space it will automatically remove the oldest backups, so there is no need for clean up.
Hey there, good article (glad to see there are still people out there doing these which are always helpful) i have used the Server 2008 Backup and Restore quite a few times supporting a lot of small businesses and it is a good technology and works well.
Just to let you know i have restored (using the DVD) from a single disk configuration to a RAID configuration and installed the controller drivers during the restore.
One thing that people do need to remember if they try and do this is that the single disk will have a slightly larger partition size on disk than a raid partition because the raid controller has to write configuration to the disk(s) i.e. if you have a 250GB single disk with one partition taking up the whole disk and then try to restore to a RAID 1 volume with 2 x 250GB disks then the restore will fail because there isn’t sufficient disk space to restore the partition. What i had to do was get 2 bigger disks (500GB) and then the restore completed successfully.
Keep up the good posts 🙂
Hello RonnyPot:
I face a big problem for windows backup. I think it will automatically to remove the oldest data. But it didn’t. I use vssadmin delete, wbadmin delete to delete the oldest data. Maybe a full backup. It cannot find any queue.
So the customer is still backup fail in last week. The status of backup HD is still full.
I don’t know how can I do. I think many people have this problem.
Pls help me to fix it, thank!
Hi I have an issue with connecting a 4TB external hard disk for backups. There is also a 2TB drive connected. When the 2TB drive is active the backup is successful.
But it wont backup to the 4TB hard disk. I have been told there is an issue with drives bigger than 2TB being used for backups. Is there anyway around this?
The error is something about a I/O error.
Hi, I have never used this with bigger disks, but I have heard problems with disks bigger than 2TB.
There is this wiki article where people comment a lot of disks and if they work or not: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1780.windows-small-business-server-external-backup-drives-compatibility-list.aspx
maybe this helps.