digimark Posted October 26, 2008 Report Share Posted October 26, 2008 (edited) On to the next question... As I migrate from Legato (EMC) Networker 6.0.x on an old tape-based system to Retrospect 7.6 on a new disk-based system, I need to choose the best Windows OS to run it on. (I have four Linux CentOS clients as well as the Retrospect host to backup each night.) The new machine is a Dell PowerEdge R200 with dual Xeon 2.33Ghz processors, 4GB RAM and (2) 1.5TB disks partitioned into a 100GB RAID 1 array for the OS, Retro software and catalog storage, and the remaining 1.3GB on each drive will be the data store. It will be running Retrospect, anti-viral and nothing else. (Yes, I'm worried about losing a disk in this situation. Once the system is in production, I'll be going back and adding an external four drive expansion bay and more disks to spread the backups across, but for now I'll be crossing my fingers.) I'm concerned about locking the machine down, remote access to manage it, and money. I know Retrospect will run on XP or Vista. It will also run on Windows 2003 Server or Windows 2008 server. 1. Will the Web editions of the server software work fine? The Microsoft website says Web editions are for web serving only, but it also implies single-application use, and the Standard version is not only much more expensive, but includes 5 CALs which I have no use for. 2. When I last used Retrospect (7.0, two years ago) I was surprised that it couldn't run as a service then. But in looking over the knowledge base at EMC, it seems that even 7.6 still doesn't run as a service. Does this mean I have to leave the Retrospect user logged in all the time to have Retrospect run properly? 3. Basically, for a dedicated Retrospect server, is there any advantage using a server product over XP or Vista? I kind of like the idea of ServerCore in 2008 Server Web Edition installing a minimal OS. Win2K8 server would also presumably need less patching to bring it up to date. I have a Win2K3 (not-R2) Standard X64 license already, so that would be $0. Alternately I can pick up a copy of XP Pro or Vista Business for $130, or a license for Win2K3 R2 Web Edition or Win2K8 Web Edition for about $400. Which of these choices do you think would be the most stable and easiest to work with in a dedicated-to-Retrospect role? I know that's a mouthful, but I'm not really current on the state of Windows OSes and could use your advice. Thanks. -Gary Edited October 26, 2008 by Guest Fixed typos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 Retrospect will run well on all systems. I typically recommend either XP or 2003 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digimark Posted October 27, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 In the case of XP. what is the best way to securely handle remote access? The major advantage of using a server OS for my application is the remote admin terminal server access. In XP, do people generally use VLC, the built-in RDC screen sharing or something else? And how can I secure it against "others" apart from XP's firewall? (This is probably a noob question but I'm not as well versed in Windows as I used to be -- been a Linux-head for a while now.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mauricev Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 When I switched to Win2K3 x64 some years ago, it seemed that memory management was better over the 32-bit version, especially with 4+ GB RAM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted October 27, 2008 Report Share Posted October 27, 2008 I use VNC to control my backup server. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy_Boy Posted October 28, 2008 Report Share Posted October 28, 2008 I run XP Professional SP3 and control Retrospect via RDP. Works well. The backup server is physically located in our comms room which no one has access to - so no real worried about the user/service thing. I have set my machine up to auto login with a user account and then lock itself using a screen saver so the GUI cannot be interfered with. 2003 Web edition should work fine, M$ have just stripped the AD functionality from it - although it offers little benefit to XP Professional in my opinion except where you need more than 10 concurrent IIS sessions. Hope that helps. Rich Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digimark Posted October 28, 2008 Author Report Share Posted October 28, 2008 Thank you -- that's the reassurance I was looking for. XP beats a server product in price -- that's the way I'll go. -Gary Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digimark Posted May 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 24, 2009 Just a note to close out this topic -- I was able to source a Windows 2K3 Server license, so that's what we went with. So far, it's worked well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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