Small Business Server 2003 SP1 yes or no anyone?

All,

I am somewhat confused now so i want to have another go at getting this straight in my head. I have a Dell 1600sc Small Business Server 2003 SP1 in our main office. Incase of theft/fire or whatever, i want to image the sbs server onto a backup server at home. The hardware is different, for example, the backup server is single drive SATA, the live server is raid, different processor, different memory etc. Will Acronis TI Server edition do this or not? I keep seeing a tip on not running sysprep due to the domain problem etc.

Any help would be appreciated, i have the Acronis software but am just hesitant to attempt this. Or maybe i should look at other ways or backup. We do use the box to it's full potential, with exchange, ISA, Sharepoint etc.

Kind regards,

Paul

 

Hello Paul,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Server Disk Backup Software.

I'm afraid that it is a little bit unclear to me from your explanation what exact actions do you want to perform. However, I can see only two possibilities available:

1. You want to create an image of your Dell 1600sc Small Business Server 2003 SP1 saving it to the network share located on your home server.

If that's the case then there should not be any problems achieving your goal, since images are ordinary files and can be stored in any folder on any hard drive without any special preparations.

2. You want to transfer your operating system from your office server to the home server.

Well, if that's the case then please take a look at the basic scheme of transferring the operating system to a different hardware:

- Prepare your Windows for transferring using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (sysprep) as it is described in this FAQ article;

- Create an image of the prepared Windows;

- Restore this image to the desired location;

You can also use disk cloning approach instead of creating an image;

- Try to boot as usual;

- If it does not boot then please do the following (depending of the operating system you use):

- Boot the computer from Windows 95/98/ME Startup Disk and run "fdisk /mbr" command;

- Boot the computer from Windows 2000/XP Installation CD and run "fixmbr" command in Recovery Console;

- In case it still does not boot, perform Windows Repair Installation as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please be aware that we do not guarantee the successful transferring of your operating system to a different hardware. Actually, no one can guarantee this.

You can also find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 8.0 Server for Windows in the respective User's Guide.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

Thanks for your reply, Alexey.

What i want to be able to have the server at home as a complete replica of the live server at the office. If the office server should be stolen/destroyed i can literally bring the home server in and fire up straight away. This would involve a complete copy of the operating system etc. I have heard of sysrep, but so many people have told me to avoid it i am very wary.

regards

Paul

 

Hello MisterBazil,

I would recommend you to create an image of your office server and then store this image in a safe place.

In case of the system crash (operating system failure, virus attack, hard drive crash. ect.), you will need to boot your server from Bootable Rescue CD and restore the beforehand created image. Everything should work fine in this case.

If your server will be stolen or completely destroyed you will obviously need to replace it with another machine and then restore the image. However, as I have already stated above, we can not guarantee that the restored operating system will boot normally on the machine with the hardware configuration that differs from the original one.

If you have any doubts on using Microsoft System Preparation Tool then please contact Microsoft Support Team. I believe they will answer your questions.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov