Backup strategy

My company is looking into developing a backup strategy and I am hoping
to get some feedback about what other people are doing. We have a
little over 100 workstations and half a dozen servers that have data on
them. The servers are a mix of Windows 2003 and Unix/Linux. What we
are wanting to do is have users' profiles stored on the network so we
can backup their email folders and files from their My Documents
folders. We run two shifts and so only have a window of about 4 hours
when files are not in use to do backups. Many of the files are CAD
drawings and so there is quite a bit of data for no more users than we have.

One thing we considered was having a server with sufficient disk space
for all our data and backing up to it. Then during the day, backing
that data up to tape, perhaps using some tape auto-loader.

We also thought about backing the data up directly to tape, but we are
afraid the backup jobs would not complete within the time available.

One other thing. Can the backup software including with the operating
systems (ie. Windows backup) be depended on, or am I better off going
with a commercial 3rd party software package?

Consider looking at one of the third party backup solutions that allow you
to do incremental backups each night to disk, then have the software combine
those incremental backups and write them to tape during the day.

See:
http://tinyurl.com/arsa2

hth
DDS W 2k MVP MCSE

"Fugtruck" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:NYXnf.33008$(E-Mail Removed). com...
> My company is looking into developing a backup strategy and I am hoping to
> get some feedback about what other people are doing. We have a little
> over 100 workstations and half a dozen servers that have data on them.
> The servers are a mix of Windows 2003 and Unix/Linux. What we are wanting
> to do is have users' profiles stored on the network so we can backup their
> email folders and files from their My Documents folders. We run two
> shifts and so only have a window of about 4 hours when files are not in
> use to do backups. Many of the files are CAD drawings and so there is
> quite a bit of data for no more users than we have.
>
> One thing we considered was having a server with sufficient disk space for
> all our data and backing up to it. Then during the day, backing that data
> up to tape, perhaps using some tape auto-loader.
>
> We also thought about backing the data up directly to tape, but we are
> afraid the backup jobs would not complete within the time available.
>
> One other thing. Can the backup software including with the operating
> systems (ie. Windows backup) be depended on, or am I better off going with
> a commercial 3rd party software package?