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What's the best/easiest backup solution for my use case?

  • Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Has a finance program called The Financial Edge (Blackbaud) that uses SQL Server 2008 R2 to keep its database
  • Stores user's files for them (i.e. it's also a file server)
  • We want to be able to rotate 2 external disks (one on-site, one off-site; swapped weekly)
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Going to assume the data is less than 2TB. If so you could just use external USB drives and the built in windows backup along with SQL server backup. Next level up would be to stand up a dedicated backup server running System Center Data Protection Manager.

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  • How do you rotate drives using Windows Server Backup? And as for SQL, the only way I've found to get it included in the Windows Server Backup is to have it do it's own backups, and have Windows Server Backup include that location to it's backups. Commented Apr 19, 2012 at 17:52
  • Using stuff you already have, this is the way to go. The built-in tools provide you with enough to keep your data redundant. Personally, I enjoy third party tools (like Novastor) that will take a bare-metal image of the machine, and using things like VSS, it can make a complete backup of your system INCLUDING SQL. Commented Apr 19, 2012 at 17:56
  • What about the two drives with WSB? Commented Apr 19, 2012 at 18:35
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    @David - Yes, use the built in SQL backup and then backup that data to the external drive. You can use windows backup or just manually copy the backups. Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 14:43
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    @David - WSB can be set up with multiple target drives. It will back up to any drive that is available. So if you plug both drives in, set up your backup, and then just leave one drive plugged in, it will happily back up. Then swap the drives every week or so. Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 23:08
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I would suggest using a combination of 2 very simple programs. Free versions of both should be sufficient in you case.

For file backups use SyncBack. Setup a task to sync in one direction (Source to Destination - your external drive) only and schedule it.

For SQL backup use SQLBackupAndFTP. As a target for storing your backups specify "Local/Network folder" and set it to a folder in your external drive. Schedule it to perform any types of backups as often as you need.

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