I am looking for a fully-automated, bare-metal, incremental backup to NAS solution for 10+ computers running Windows 7 Professional. (None of the computers I'm backing up host server or database applications.) Right now the best option looks like Windows 7's native backup utility. I'm not sure if that can provide bare-metal backups to a NAS. From what I understand, Windows VSS requires direct access to the backup medium.
Is it possible to write bare-metal backups of Windows 7 machines to a shared NAS using Windows 7's native backup utility? If not, is it possible to create full-volume backups of Windows 7 machines by storing them on a NAS connected via iSCSI to a server running SBS 2011 Essentials?
Best Answer
Have a look at Windows Home Server 2011. The backup functionality is actually very good (block-level de-duplicated backups of the clients with a nice UI to allow users to perform recovery and a bare-metal restore option with a bootable CD image for recovery) and you don't necessarily have to use any of the rest of the product. You can backup 10 clients w/ a single license. My only wish w/ the product was that it could join an Active Directory domain. I'd jump at the chance to purchase the backup functionality of this product in a standalone product (are you listening, Microsoft?) because the price / performance blows similar competing products out of the water.