Windows 2008 Server Backup - backup

What are my options if I want to just backup my data directories on Windows 2008 Server. It looks to me like the backup software built into the OS only backs up an entire hard drive.
Is my only option to copy the files?

Ntbackup, the backup program included in previous versions of Windows Server and NT-based Windows client operating systems, is no longer supplied or supported, but you still have some choices.
Use Windows Server Backup to back up full hard drive partitions. You will need to configure your system to store data on a separate partition from the boot partition in order to keep from backing up the operating system. (Note: You must back up to a partition on a different disk or to a network share.)
Use Robocopy. This is a command-line tool that replaces xcopy. It has numerous options that allow you to back up via file-copying and set the archive bit according to what type of backup job you want to achieve.
Purchase a third-party backup tool. Microsoft Data Protection Manager and Symantec BackupExec are two enterprise-capable (and enterprise-priced) options.

Related

Perform a full environment automatic backup

does anybody know a way to perform a periodic remote backup of the full environment (so comprehensive of the application servers and SQL databases) in Jelastic?
I wanted to use Google Drive to store the backups as I was already using it with Plesk.
Thanks.

How do backups work in DirectAdmin?

I'm sure there's a good amount of developers here that use DirectAdmin and I had a quick question.
I've always used cPanel and I'm not on a server that is using DirectAdmin instead. Where in DirectAdmin can you generate a full backup of the account at the user level?
Also, do DirectAdmin backups include everything related to the account like cPanel backups do? For example, not only the files and databases but also the cron jobs, DNS zones, email accounts, etc.?
And where are the backups stored by default? Is there an option to send the backups to a remote server via FTP like you can with cPanel?
There are two different backup systems built into DA:
Admin Tools | System Backup. This tool lets you backup configuration data and arbitrary directories, locally or using FTP or SCP.
Admin Tools | Admin Backup/Transfer. This tool is oriented toward backing up data account by account, in one archive per account, in a format that you can use to restore from (in the same tool) on the original or another DA server (i.e. if you want to transfer to a new server). You can back up locally and/or via FTP.
Both options can also be scheduled via cron.
Depending on your level of access, only one of these might be available to you. This page has further info for non-administrators: http://www.site-helper.com/backup.html.
You can improve your DirectAdmin backup with an incremental backup plugin that includes local and remote backup location, please check the setup guide here

copying reports from a reporting database to antoher

I am a total newbie in SQL/SQL server stuff, and I am using SSRS to make a new reporting server/service and upload some .rdl files to it
I have a reporting server on a machine, which has a lot of reports and data sources uploaded to it's database.
I created a new reporting server with a fresh database on another machine, and what I want to do is to copy the old database content to the fresh one (the reports and the datasources..etc)
I have no copy of the individual reports to upload them to the new server using localhost/reports
is there's a fast solution to what i am having? please do it in detail because I never worked with SQL before.
Different ways to do this:
Report Server Databases
Use the detach/attach or backup/restore instructions here. Both of these methods require a backup of encryption keys on the existing instance, which are then restored to the new report server instance. Instructions on backup/restore of encryption keys here. Migrating the ReportServer and ReportServerTempdb databases is the easiest way to ensure all content is available on the new server.
Report Object Scripting
Reporting Services Scripter is an older (but still working with SSRS 2008R2, not sure about 2012) tool that can be used to transfer objects (folders, shared data sources, shared data sets, reports, etc) between report servers. Good choice if you want to pick and choose what is migrated.
If you are receiving an error regarding unsupported scale-out deployment, this means you are running Standard edition and need to remove the old report server entry from the database in the new location. It can be done using Reporting Services Configuration Manager, or by using rskeymgmt at command line.
Reporting Services Configuration Manager
Open Reporting Services Configuration Manager and connect to the new report server instance.
Click on Scale-out Deployment to view registered report servers.
Select the old report server instance and click the Remove Server button.
Command line and rskeymgmt
Browse to the Tools\Binn folder of your SQL Server client installation.
Run the following to list registered report servers
rskeymgmt -l -i
Using the installation ID (GUID) of the old report server, remove it
rskeymgmt -r -i
More info on scale-out deployments and rskeymgmt here.
To migrate Reporting Services, use migration manual from MSDN (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143724(v=sql.120).aspx). If you encounter "the feature: scale-out deployment is not supported in this edition of reporting services. (rsoperation notsupported)" error, go to ReportServer database and remove the old encryption key from table dbo.Keys.

Backing Up SQL Server To Cloud?

To start i dont have much experience with DB's. In summary, i have an application for a client. They dont want to necessarilary host their DB online but have a local sql server set up for their 2 computers.
I have a batch script that backs up the database every night. Is there a way in the batch script to send them to the cloud like a skydrive,etc?
Try our SQLBackupAndFTP software. You can schedule backup jobs with SQLBackupAndFTP (full, differential and transaction log backups), save backups at local folders, FTP, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Amazon S3, SkyDrive, delete old backups and configure email notifications... Basic features are available in free version or you can try all features in trial mode.
Just backup to SkyDrive folder. If DB is big use rsync for sending to cloud or do full backups every week, differential every day and transaction every hour (depending of you application etc) then there will be less data to send to cloud.
backup database to SD folder - using backup compression (if available in your edition of sql server, see WITH COMPRESSION clause of BACKUP statement help in BOL) or using 3rd party backup compression tool (either free or paid)
also you can backup database to temporary folder and then zip it to SD folder
If you are willing to spend a bit of money, cloudberry has an sql backup tool that will do exactly that (and more).
http://www.cloudberrylab.com/sql-backup-amazon-s3-azure.aspx

Hyper-V snapshot backup strategy appropriate for production SQL server?

So SQL Server 2008 in Hyper-V is a supported configuration, and should perform well as long as you use fixed or pass-through disks and increase your processor/memory settings appropriately. My question is can I use snapshots as a reliable backup mechanism, or should I use the tried and trusted maintenance plan to do my backups?
You should NOT use Hyper-V snapshots as your backup strategy for SQL. Stick with something (built-in or otherwise) that will do SQL aware backups.
Hyper-V snapshots (in my opinion) should only be used on production servers for very short term disaster recovery. If you're doing an upgrade, do a snapshot first, immediately test when done, then ditch the snapshot. This sort of thing should be done along side your regular backups, not in place of it.
If you were to move to Hyper-V snapshots as your sole backup strategy, you'd lose the ability to restore your databse to another server & do point in time restores of the database - among other things that I'm sure I'm just not thinking of now.
Virtualization Snapshots for Hyper-V or any virtualization vendor are not supported to use with SQL Server in a virtual machine. It is possible that you may not encounter any problems when using snapshots and SQL Server, but Microsoft will not provide technical support to SQL Server customers for a virtual machine that was restored from a snapshot
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956893/en-us