Question : Backup Solution for small Netware / OES network

Our company has a small, single-server network with 15 users, running Novell Netware 6.5 (SP6) and Groupwise 6.5. Our accounts software, which doesn't run on Netware, runs from a Windows XP box on the network. We currently use Veritas Backup Exec 9.1 to backup the server + Groupwise, and also the accounts data and programs using a remote agent for Windows, to DLT VS1 tape on a Freecom drive attached to the server.

Having been advised that Novell are shortly withdrawing all support for Netware to devote their resources to OES on Linux, we've been considering our options. We will most likely ultimately move to OES rather than desert to Windows Server; however probably not within the next 12 months - we've always found Netware 6.5 to be very stable and aren't too panicked by the end-of-life.

However we also want to upgrade our backup options. We've always found backing up to tape a bit flaky (and increasingly so recently) and would prefer to back up to USB external hard drives. We also would like a solution which includes server imaging for disaster recovery, with the ability to restore the entire server to a new drive including operating system, patches, etc., as well as data. It also needs to be able to back up the accounts system on the Windows box.

We ideally want to implement this before upgrading the network OS, so we need a solution which will work on Netware now, but also on OES later on (maybe with a minor upgrade, but without having to buy it all over again).

Backup Exec (now owned by Symantec) no longer supports Netware, and new versions apparently only support Linux systems via a remote agent running from a Windows Server machine, so we've ruled that out. Syncsort Backup Express seems to tick a lot of the boxes, but is probably a bit out of our league - it seems to be aimed at much larger enterprises than ours, and is priced accordingly.

Is there anything out there which would give us the functionality we're looking for, at a sensible price for a company of our size, and can be recommended by experts who've used it?

Answer : Backup Solution for small Netware / OES network

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best.  Obviously, you want to get away from tape.  The  portable hard disk solution seems like a great way to go -- cheap and easy, and you can probably get 10 or 20 suitable drives for the cost of a decent tape drive nowadays, and avoid the cost of media.

You already have a "secondary server" in the form of the XP box used for your accounting system.  You could easily connect the drives to this system, and then create a few backup scripts that move data files over from your existing servers over to this hard disk.  You can use a simple tool like XXCOPY or ROBOCOPY to effect a synchronization, or you can pick a more powerful tool like Beyond Compare (under $50) from http://www.scootersoftware.com/.  

This doesn't cover your image backup issue, but perhaps there are other products that can likely be used in conjunction, such as Ghost for NetWare, or a Physical-to-Virtual migration tool that can create backup images of the NetWare box.  Once you have the image, you can then copy it to an external HD pretty easily.  (Consequently, this is also a side benefit of virtualizing the NetWare server -- you can not only move it to new hardware very easily, but you can keep running it in a VMWare environment for some time to come.)  Of course, if you virtualize, then you can also use a VMWare backup solution, of which several options abound.