Scott's questions

I have servers in two different datacenters with each datacenter getting static IPs. What I would like to do is setup the servers as IIS7 servers and allowing them to failover from datacenter to datacenter with little (or preferably) no interruption. Servers on both sides are running Windows Server 2008 x64 with IIS7 (or 7.5 if needed). I am interested in how to point DNS traffic to the new datacenter without manual human intervention.

For example:

• Datacenter A:
  • IP: 192.168.1.115
  • Servers: Server 2008 x64 w/ IIS 7

• Datacenter B:
  • IP: 192.168.1.220
  • Servers: Server 2008 x64 w/ IIS 7

• Other information:
  • Domain Name: Example.org
  • Domain DNS: 192.168.1.115

If Datacenter A connectivity went down (broken service line, etc.) how does the traffic know to route to Datacenter B on 192.168.1.220?

Thanks,

Scott

I have several machines which are on a small network with one DC and 3 to 5 workstations on the network at any given time. These are all setup with DNS and AD on the same server. I want the ability to automate a backup, re-image, and restore of data for any of the workstations. I have each of the workstations on my network backed up to the server (user settings, files, etc. - not a full image) each night. I then backup the server every night (differential backup) and take an external backup drive off-site once a week. When the data goes off-site, the backup drive that gets swapped in gets a new full backup, and then differential for each additional backup until the week is up.
I have a few requirements here:

• First, I want to be able to run an easy automated backup routine, but don't know the best way to do this. Currently I am using ntbackup to backup to a network share on the sever for each machine's daily backup, which then gets backed-up on the server to an external drive nightly. The external drive is then taken off-site weekly. This should protect my data from a workstation or server crash each day, and a theft of workstation or server (or fire, etc.) weekly. This is acceptable to me for the risk of data loss of a day or so (up to a week worth of data in the event of a catastrophic problem such as theft or fire.)

• Second, I want to have some automated way of doing a workstation recovery. I'd like it to be a one button recovery type of situation. In the worst case scenario, I would take the last days recovery data to do the recovery. Ideally, I would have the ability to log off the user that is on the workstation (if any) and start a backup of user data (documents, settings, desktop, etc.) After the backup is complete, I'd like to be able to start a remote bare-metal (no user interaction) restore to a base image. Then once complete, I'd like to have the workstation (if not already done so in the image) be joined to the domain and the workstation data re-populated.

The above mentioned equipment is:

• Server 2003 Small Business Edition R2
• Workstations - XP pro and Vista (no Windows 7 yet)

Is there a good one click backup, re-image, restore solution out there? What are other people using?

Thanks for any advice you can provide.