Small Office Backup Solution
 

In the continuing saga of wearing the IT Manager hat for my dad's office...

I'd like to firm up a good backup solution. The overriding factor should be ease (and speed) of restores. We're going to have a Windows 2008 Server Foundation server running as domain controller and file server for several workstations. Users will only save data on the server. The server's data drives will be two, 1-TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration. If anything happens to one drive, all they will need to do is turn off the server, replace the failed drive, and let the spare re-populate the mirror.

I also want to do some form of online backup in case of fire or theft or something like that. I've historically been using JungleDisk Server to back up to Amazon's cloud. But now I'm looking at Acronis's website and their solutions seem pretty cool (if significantly more expensive). It would be nice to store images of the hard drives of each workstation, plus the OS drive of the server, so that they can just pop a new drive in, re-image it with the correct backup image, and be on their way.

What do people think?

Sescuity Of Online Backups
 

I have a question directly related to the OP.

Let's say I use an online service, e.g. Carbonite. Every new or changed file is uploaded.

How about when I delete a file?

Does the original file remain on the online backup service computers?

If so, can I delete it from them?

I would go with an onsite and cloud solution. This thread I started on mozy will give you some ideas.

Backup to local hard drives that can be easily rotated offsite and then follow it with online (cloud) backups.

The deleted files normally stay on the backup server for a while before they are removed. I think it's 60 days on Carbonite.

Cheers,
Rick

+1

Online backup
 

A friend of mine recommended Backup Freedom online backup . The company is based in New York. Their technician came to my office and did a customized installation for both my 2 computers and my 3 external hard drives. He tested both backups and restores and even trained me! The service is simple to use. My online backups have been working fine for over 6 months. I have also been restoring files and folders without any issues. Worth every penny.