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How not to get my back up

Posted on 24 Oct 2005 at 12:34

Jon Honeyball is in total disbelief as he comes to the rescue of a company completely ill prepared for data backup emergencies

Since they have Windows Server 2003, they also have a full SharePoint Server licence, so the logical thing is to buy a small second server and another Server 2003 licence, then install it to give us a backup of the Active Directory information. Finally, SharePoint Server needs to be installed and set up so that documents can be stored automatically into the SharePoint Server engine. At least that way we'd benefit from some sense of document storage and structure, and SharePoint would give us the document versioning and histories that are completely lacking at the moment. I'd also like to get their server off its current POP3/SMTP mail gateway capability and onto a proper installation of Exchange Server. That's because, yes you guessed, there's no backup of email happening at the moment, and no central store for all the email traffic that flows into and out of the company. Given that this is a geographically widely spread organisation, it's no surprise that email gets used heavily, and not having a proper backup or archive of it seems madness to me.

But be warned about one thing. Active Directory certainly allows an astonishing level of control of the desktop, network and where information ends up residing, making it perfectly possible to enforce a policy that locks things tighter than a drum. It's not nice doing that, of course, but if you have to do it to bring users into line, so be it. The health of the business is of far greater importance than the ignorant rantings of an uneducated user who demands the ability to keep doing things 'their way'. That's fine, they can keep doing things their way if they insist, but rest assured that under the covers a big sleight of hand will be happening. Sysadmins always win!

SyncToy

Keeping those pesky files in sync with a server can be done by a variety of means, up to and including a full Active Directory implementation. However, often there's a need to do a quick copy from one place to another, and for such a task you want something that's extremely easy to use, and can be set up and used in the twinkle of an eye.

A number of tools can do this, and in the past I've used SecondCopy, but I was intrigued to see Microsoft producing a tool of its own. It's part of the PowerToys series and is a beta release, so don't whinge if it goes horribly wrong. SyncToy is the name of the tool, and you can find it on the Downloads section of the Microsoft website. Installation and configuration is a breeze - it works on the basis of having a 'left folder' on screen and a 'right folder'. This is better than 'source' and 'destination', especially when you're doing two-way copying - which is the source and which is the destination in such a scenario? Both, of course, but that doesn't help the naming. Setting up replication is a matter of a four-step wizard, and most of the settings are just point-and-click. There's lots of functionality in there and it can even cope with renaming too. It's clear it was written by some engineers at Microsoft to help reconcile the copying of large numbers of image files from one place to another, ensuring everything was properly copied and handling renaming and so forth in the process.

Is it worth a look? Yes, just don't expect the earth. It's free and simple to use, and hence ideal for a budding junior sysadmin or user who wants to set up some sort of copy facility to a server without getting involved in offline folders or other complicated functions.