Acronis?

[asanders]

Any of you using Acronis or other software to make automatic ghost images of critical machines? I do the backup of Open Dental, films, documents, but ghost images can be a lifesaver. Just curious.

[Rickliftig]

I use Macrium - primarily because it will also Ghost Server 2003 @$59.95. The Acronis' 'enterprise' version from what I remember is about $795. Yikes!

But I have yet another backup plan - I bought an inexpensive Dell server shell (SC1420) (used with only 20,000 original miles driven by a little old accountant in Omaha) for about $200 on ebay. It is identical to my server. A couple of 600 GB drives in there and it is ready to be used at any time. Even better than a Ghost backup (IMHO), because I KNOW that it is up and running 100%.

As my needs become more complex, I may need to re-assess. But my current thinking is try to imagine any problem that can happen and figure out in advance how to deal with it - including biggies, like theft, destruction and fried motherboards. The spare server seems to be a VERY good idea.