Backup Strategy

[curiousgeorge]

I work at a Univerisity and have some troublesome users in one area lab who refuse to work from the server. Here is our setup and "their" visions of backing data up. My boss and I are opposed to their ideas and would like for them to work directly from the server. Any ides, comments, or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Pros and cons are also accepted.

 

 

 

Server is W2k - backed up nightly

 

G3 clients, G4 clients

 

10BaseT network

 

 

 

They would like to run Retrospect on a Quiksilver running OS 9 and backup 13 clients machines data to the Windows 2000 server on a weekly basis. They don't want to work from the server.

 

 

 

My boss and I are adamantly opposed to this. I would like feedback.

 

 

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

George

[AmyJ]

Trusting end-users to always save their documents to the server usually results in disaster when a much needed document cannot be retrieved because it was saved to the workstation. That they didn't follow proceedure does not make the document any easier to retrieve or the situation better for anyone involved.

 

 

 

As a backup administrator, your goal should be to make backup seamless and invisible to your users, and take the guess work out of where documents should be saved. While more media is needed to backup all workstations, the end result is twofold:

 

 

 

* If the entire workstation crashes, you can restore it back to the state it was in quickly and easily

 

* You will always have a backup of all data, regardless of where it was stored

 

 

 

The last thing most of us want to do is tell someone that their hard work is irretrievable. If you goal is to save space, you can always do a backup of the workstations with a 'Documents' selector that backs up only documents on their drive.

[curiousgeorge]

Amy,

 

 

 

They are the only lab here that insist on not working from the server. I find it hard to allow this when all the other labs cooperate and work from the server. Unfortunately, the network is only 10MBit here and were are talking somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 GB of data a week....

 

 

 

Let me know what you think now.

 

 

 

George

[AmyJ]

I stand by my original opinion - and please keep in mind, it is only my opinion. If your users are not going to save to the server, you should backup the workstations. In most businesses, the extra cost is well outweighed by the value of the data.