Vista Backups for Departments

I was looking at moving the users I support to Vista backup. We currently
use a 3rd party product to tape, but as data keeps getting larger, writing
to tape becomes more and more ineffecient. Only one computer at a time can
write to the tape system we have.

So I started moving computers to Vista for file backup. The lack of control
over files was a little annoying, but it works well enough for what I need.
We backup to NAS, so all the computers can backup simultaneously (if they
need to). But then in further reading, I hit a major stumbling block. It is
how full backups are done after the first.

As everyone knows, making the end user an Admin is just a disaster waiting
to happen. So none of our users are Administrators. But one must be an
Administrator to run backup. OK, I can understand why from a security
perspective, in order to backup files I should have rights to them. So I
set up the first backups and they run under an Administrator context.

However if what I am reading is correct, sometime in 30-90 days, my users
are going to receive a message that they need to do another full backup.
The users are not administrators, so unless I'm mistaken, they cannot do
that. The idea of setting up a time that I can login to use their computer
to backup their machine every month is ridiculous at best.

So, do the future full backups run under the security context I setup? Or
are my fears confirmed, the user is going to have to go in and tell it to do
a full backup, which will fail. Which means I will have to personally run
full backups on 45 computers about once a month?

I hope I'm wrong, but if I am not, I don't see how the backup system is at
all usable for corporate clients.

Thanks in advance for any explanations or ideas,

Rick

Rick Watson wrote:
> I was looking at moving the users I support to Vista backup. We
> currently use a 3rd party product to tape, but as data keeps getting
> larger, writing to tape becomes more and more ineffecient. Only one
> computer at a time can write to the tape system we have.
>
> So I started moving computers to Vista for file backup. The lack of
> control over files was a little annoying, but it works well enough for
> what I need. We backup to NAS, so all the computers can backup
> simultaneously (if they need to). But then in further reading, I hit a
> major stumbling block. It is how full backups are done after the first.
>
> As everyone knows, making the end user an Admin is just a disaster
> waiting to happen. So none of our users are Administrators. But one
> must be an Administrator to run backup. OK, I can understand why from a
> security perspective, in order to backup files I should have rights to
> them. So I set up the first backups and they run under an Administrator
> context.
>
> However if what I am reading is correct, sometime in 30-90 days, my
> users are going to receive a message that they need to do another full
> backup. The users are not administrators, so unless I'm mistaken, they
> cannot do that. The idea of setting up a time that I can login to use
> their computer to backup their machine every month is ridiculous at best.
>
> So, do the future full backups run under the security context I setup?
> Or are my fears confirmed, the user is going to have to go in and tell
> it to do a full backup, which will fail. Which means I will have to
> personally run full backups on 45 computers about once a month?
>
> I hope I'm wrong, but if I am not, I don't see how the backup system is
> at all usable for corporate clients.
>
> Thanks in advance for any explanations or ideas,
>
> Rick

Take a look at this backup program

http://www.backup-for-workgroups.com/index.html

We use it here where I work and I'm quite satisfied with it.

gls858

I use veritas Backup Exec 12.5 for Windows Server at home. I had to bu
a $400+ Server Agent to backup Vista x64 Ultimate because of change
made to Vista by Microsoft. You could setup disk to disk backups usin
Vista backup to the network. I would consider imaging them instead o
backups. They restore faster. Acronis is a nice tool for this

--
SCSIraidGUR

Michael A. McKenney
'www.SCSIraidGURU.com' (http://www.SCSIraidGURU.com)