Backup During the Day

[krajcd5]

I am the administrator for a small company, 35 users, where the majority of users have laptops running OS 10.2.x. Right now I have normal backup scripts scheduled to run every night at 10:00 pm. The problem with this is because of the mobility of our office most users machines are never here at 10:00pm to be backed up. What I was looking to do is change the backup script start time to say 10:00 am so as to backup every user that is in the building. My question/concern is do I run into any problems corrupting files that might be open and running when the backup executes. My biggest concern is Entourage which most users never turn off. Is it possible to safely back up the Entourage database while it is running. I have read about the product that Dantz sells called "Open File" seeing how it only runs on Windows server it really does not help me. Do they have a comparable product for the Mac server? Any help or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

Daniel Krajc

[roscolux]

I am in a very similar situation. From my research I have found that it is not a good idea to back up the entourage database file while Entourage is open. When Entourage is running, the Entourage Database is not considered opened. Thus when Retrospect backs the machine up- it does copy the Entourage database files. And If the database is being written to as its being back-up-ed, the potential risk for making a corrupt Entourage Database Backup is high.

 

 

 

I would love to be told that the above is not the case......so speak up if you know otherwise!!!! (but I’m doubtful).

 

 

 

All user’s in my office have laptops- they take them home at night, and they travel a lot- so I really have to make sure they quit Entourage when the machine is being backed up. In the last 6 months I have learned the following things to make my back-up work pretty well:

 

 

 

-the “Back Up Server” /script is wonderful. Esp with laptops- and you can even remind people to quit their email program when backing up- look into this instead of running one script at 10am.

 

-The back up machine should be running os X. This makes a huge speed difference over os 9. Also the more memory the machine has the better (for counting/comparing files).

 

-A 100T switched network. And a 100T backup server. I can get up to 180mb/min now I’ve switched everything over. A far leap from the 18mb/min I’d get with 10T.

 

-Really pay attention to when you have to Recycle your backups. I’m not sure if I even have a grasp of this. I wish you could tell Retrospect to Recycle all data in a Backup-Set older then 14 days (or something) automatically. *******(If there is a way to do this, please let me know- I’d get a few more hours of sleep at night.)********

 

 

 

Anyway- just throwing in my 2 cents.

 

 

 

Comments, Questions, Suggestions are more then welcomed.

 

 

 

-Donald