Retail store backup and recovery

[tkwjPOS]

I am a Point-Of-Sale administrator trying to implement a backup &
recovery solution for our 250 retail store registers in the next month
if
possible. I have been testing several solutions i.e. Norton Ghost, NT
Backup, etc. and have yet to establish a solid solution. Considering
our platform could you give me your best practices or recommendation,
drawing on solutions that you have seen work for yourself / clients?

Platform:
All Windows 2000/XP / Intel machines / @2Ghx / 512 MB RAM
Reg1 has 2 x 40 GB physical hard drives C: and D:
Reg2 has 1 x 40 GB physical hard drive C:
100baseT Ethernet LAN between registers

Slow (56K) WAN connection to corporate network.
12am - 6am is system dedicated time period for backups, maintenance,
etc.

Running MSSQL, Outlook (connected to Exchange), Point-Of-Sale
application.

Challenge:
To be able to restore either register on-site from the last backup
point. A technician would need to bring a blank hard drive to the
site. We would not want to have to re-install Windows. (Bare metal
restore)

I am trying to find the best fit solution for what we are trying to
do. Cost is not a big factor, but a high-cost solution would take more
justifying and therefore more time to implement.

 

[Kerry Brown]

I am a Point-Of-Sale administrator trying to implement a backup &
recovery solution for our 250 retail store registers in the next month
if
possible. I have been testing several solutions i.e. Norton Ghost, NT
Backup, etc. and have yet to establish a solid solution. Considering
our platform could you give me your best practices or recommendation,
drawing on solutions that you have seen work for yourself / clients?

Platform:
All Windows 2000/XP / Intel machines / @2Ghx / 512 MB RAM
Reg1 has 2 x 40 GB physical hard drives C: and D:
Reg2 has 1 x 40 GB physical hard drive C:
100baseT Ethernet LAN between registers

Slow (56K) WAN connection to corporate network.
12am - 6am is system dedicated time period for backups, maintenance,
etc.

Running MSSQL, Outlook (connected to Exchange), Point-Of-Sale
application.

Challenge:
To be able to restore either register on-site from the last backup
point. A technician would need to bring a blank hard drive to the
site. We would not want to have to re-install Windows. (Bare metal
restore)

I am trying to find the best fit solution for what we are trying to
do. Cost is not a big factor, but a high-cost solution would take more
justifying and therefore more time to implement.

Disk images of the whole system for both systems. This could be stored at
your corporate headquarters as well as an onsite copy on DVD, external USB
drive, etc. This should be updated as Microsoft updates or POS program
updates are applied.

A daily backup of onsite data should be done. Many people are using USB
drives for this but I prefer tape. This allows backups to be stored offsite.
Normal backup strategies can be used e.g. one tape for each day of the week
and three or four extras that are rotated off site once a week. If
turnaround time is of utmost importance you could also keep a duplicate
machine at each site, preferably in a locked area so it won't get stolen
with the other machines. In a scenario where a POS machine is stolen or
loses a major component a technician could deploy the duplicate machine,
restore the latest image, then restore the latest data backup. This
shouldn't take more than a couple of hours on site. The tape backup can be
automated with the only user action required being changing a tape. What
program you use for this is determined by what you are backing up. It could
be as simple as NTBackup or as complex as Arcserve. Errors can be emailed to
the corporate site.

The imaging after patches/updates would be need to be done by a reasonably
knowledgeable person on site when needed. You could send updated images on
DVD from the corporate site but I would be worried about something going
wrong during the image restore process. If something goes wrong the machine
may be out of service until a technician is dispatched. Imaging assumes that
all of the hardware involved is identical and will stay identical. This
means having enough spare parts to last the lifetime of the machines as we
all know that the manufacturer's product life cycle is based more on their
revenue stream than what works for the customer.

I am assuming with the above that the data is stored onsite. If the data is
offsite then skip the part about data backups to tape. The offsite database
should already have it's own disaster recovery plan in place.

Kerry