I am running a small network (5 clients) on a server running SBS2k3. I'd like to be able to set up a NAS in a remote location in order to schedule nightly, incremental backups on the server drives. I'd also like to run a full backup once a week. Can anyone recommend a good NAS drive that would help me accomplish this? One that comes with it's own software I can install on my server is a plus. NT backup just isn't robust enough to meet my needs.
I have been looking at both the Seagate Blackarmor series or the DROBO line of backups, what comments / experiences might you have had with either one of those lines?
Thanks,
Mike
Best Answer
Have a look at BackupExec Small Business Server. It has agents for SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint and Active directory built in. No need to purchase more agents like the full BackupExec. You can also get client licenses and backup your office PCs.
As for a backup target, I looked into the drobo and wasn't terribly impressed. I don't know if I'd trust it's implementation of RAID since it seems to be a bit mutated. IMO, the most comfortable NAS solution would be one built on more standardized parts. I would suggest building your own NAS machine using 1TB Western Digital Green hard drives (10^15 URE rating! WOOT!), a decent-but-not-outlandish SATA RAID controller and OpenFiler. Toss all those vital bits into a decent case with a motherboard and power supply and you've got yourself a great NAS box. You could probably do it for the same price as a DROBO or ReadyNAS NV+ and you'd have more flexibility (iSCSI targets if you want to do that too) and have better visibility into just what the thing is doing with your data.