Went to a
potential client site yesterday to do a system review. My predecessor
managed to convince the company’s principal that for their server they need
a BackupExec. Now,
that’s a > AUD$1,000 a pop and, IMHO, a waste of company’s money
for the file/print server for 7 users. I don’t want to take anything away
from BackupExec – it’s a great product, faster and better than
built-in NT backup, does wonders in media management and great to restore
individual mailboxes (God™ knows why Exchange does not allow that). But
for 7 users? Ple-e-e-e-ase! I found that for small servers (my company
included), NT backup works just as well.
As far as
I know, the only challenges with NT backup are scheduling and reporting. Batch
file takes care of the former, great command line mailer blat - of the latter. The
other “cool” features: creates media name based on backup date, automatically
finds latest backup report.
<rant>
Why did Microsoft remove command-line option to specify report file in 2000 and
2003 servers? Would it kill to keep it there in the same shape and form as it
was in NT 4.0?
</rant>
The batch
file is below. The logic is self-explanatory but feel free to drop me a line. Naturally,
server name, folders and email addresses need to be changed and before batch is
used, file “Daily backup.bks” needs to be created using NT backup
(contains list of things to backup – take a peek inside – it’s
plain text). Once everything is in place, just schedule the batch file as
required.
@echo off
setlocal
Rem get date into a vairable so we can create good
media name
for /F "usebackq delims=" %%i IN (`date /t`) DO set
dt="%%ibackup media"
Rem Perform backup
C:\WINNT\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@C:\Documents and
Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows
NT\NTBackup\data\Daily backup.bks" /n %dt% /d "Daily backup set"
/v:yes /r:yes /rs:no /hc:on /m normal /j "Daily backup.job" /l:s /p
"4mm DDS" /um
Rem Set folder name containing backup log files
set fld=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application
Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data\
Rem This dir command will list all log files sorted by
date in bare format
set fcmd=dir "%fld%*.log" /OD /A-D /B
Rem set command will set lastf variable to the last
file in set, i.e. the latest one
for /F "tokens=* delims= " %%i in ('%fcmd%') do set lastf=%fld%%%i
Rem Mail latest log file to georged
c:\admin\blat.exe "%lastf%" -t georged@solutionsnet.com.au -s
"Tape Backup Report" -mime -server SMTPSERVERNAME -f
"backup@solutionsnet.com.au" –q
Works
like a charm for me (and my clients).