Ed You may want to look at a product called REplay (http://www.appassure.com)
It combines VSS with a slick restore interface and some VM integrations... we use it for Exchange and SQL but their base product does straight up Windows boxes. We've been a cutomer of theirs for quite some time and are happy with it. Not sure how its pricign compares to Acronis but from the functional requirements you have, esp the ability to go back more than one snapshot hit this nail on the head. Ryan Dorman Manager, TSG Engineering Blackboard Inc. O: 202-463-4860 x2618 M: 202-213-7918 From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Edward Ned Harvey Sent: Sunday, August 22, 2010 8:59 PM To: LOPSA Technical Discussions Subject: [lopsa-tech] Windows Complete System Backup (Intentionally ignoring Vista.) Win 7 has a fairly decent complete-system backup capability in the Pro and Ultimate editions. You're able to make a complete system backup, and later you can perform incrementals, and thanks to VSS, the incrementals already know which blocks have changed on disk, so they're able to efficiently (almost instantly) update the backup image. When you do a restore, you will have a list of all the date/timestamps when backups were done, so you can restore your complete system to any one of the complete system images you created. The catch is: To get full functionality, your destination must be on a NTFS filesystem. If you backup to a network share, then only the latest version is preserved. Also, you cannot restore individual files. It's the complete system, or nothing. (Well ... that is a fib. See below.) They also layered on a typical file-level backup capability, which stores certain directories or selected files inside the same backup file as your complete system backup. But by doing this, you're losing some of the efficiency because it's a typical file-level backup in addition to your complete system backup. It performs the complete system backup, and also scans some directories for files that have changed since last time, and copies over the changed files along with the incremental complete system. For this reason, I prefer to use the Win complete-system backup, and *no* file selections. Then, use something else, like Goodsync etc, to layer-on some file-level backups. The other catch is: You can't exclude anything from your complete system image. Still, the near-instant complete system incremental backup included with your OS is so desirable, I decided to explore some more. To figure out if the backup can go across the network without sacrificing functionality. I created an iscsi target on my file server, and I connected to it in Win 7. I formatted my iscsi disk using NTFS, and backed up to it. It worked perfectly. Still, I was nervous about using it, because I'm not sure how it behaves, when you disconnect & reconnect the network, or sleep the computer, or stuff like that. And of course, it's not useful unless there is a way to restore. I haven't tried connecting to an iscsi disk from within the CD boot restore environment, but I'm not optimistic. I think most likely if you want to restore, you have to use another computer to copy everything from the iscsi disk to a usb disk and then you can restore. Maybe there's a good solution here. Maybe not. I have been using Acronis True Image instead, because of ability to restore individual files, and go across a network efficiently, and exclude certain files. But now there's a feature that Acronis is lacking ... The compatibility with TrueCrypt system-volume encryption. Anyway, still just exploring what solutions are possible. This email and any attachments may contain confidential and proprietary information of Blackboard that is for the sole use of the intended recipient. If you are not the intended recipient, disclosure, copying, re-distribution or other use of any of this information is strictly prohibited. Please immediately notify the sender and delete this transmission if you received this email in error.
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