Windows Server 2008

Given the state of the economy and changes in the IT industry, a lot of folks are thinking hard about their jobs.  Watch this video where Architect Evangelist Brian Prince shares his ideas on managing an IT Pro's career.

Heat up your skills with the all-new Firestarter event series. Each day tackles a single Microsoft technology, including free sessions presented live by Microsoft developer and IT pro evangelists and technology specialists - with special appearances from community luminaries. You can attend in person, via live meeting, or download the webcast at your convenience.

1)      Copy robocopy.exe from the Resource Kit to something like c:\backup\tools. This is used in step 5 below.

2)      Create a backup list using the GUI version. Save a system state only as night.bks, save all the drives and system state as night-all.bks. Make sure you use the backup directory path listed below in the script or modify to a SAN location.

3)      Use the follow for the required .bat file

C:\backup\tools\nightlybackup.bat:

            *** BEGIN BAT FILE ***

@ECHO OFF

REM

REM  Build Date String yyyymmddhhmm

REM

for /F "usebackq tokens=2" %%i IN (`DATE /T`) DO Set TIMESTR=%%i%

for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2,3 delims=/" %%i IN ('%TIMESTR%') DO SET MONTH=%%i%

for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2,3 delims=/" %%i IN ('%TIMESTR%') DO SET DAY=%%j%

for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2,3 delims=/" %%i IN ('%TIMESTR%') DO SET YEAR=%%k%

for /F "usebackq" %%i IN (`Time /T`) DO Set TIMESTR=%%i%

for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2* delims=:" %%i IN ('%TIMESTR%') DO SET HOUR=%%i%

for /F "usebackq tokens=1,2* delims=:" %%i IN ('%TIMESTR%') DO SET MINUTE=%%j%

SET DIRSTR=%YEAR%%MONTH%%DAY%%HOUR%%MINUTE%

SET TIMESTR=

SET MONTH=

SET DAY=

SET YEAR=

SET HOUR=

SET MINUTE=

@ECHO Directory String %DIRSTR%

 

IF NOT EXIST “c:\backup\tools\nightlybackup.bat” GOTO SKIP

 

C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@\\DOMAINCONTROLLERNAME\c$\Backup_DCNAME\night-all.bks" /n "DCNAME.bkf" /d "Nightly" /v:yes /r:no /rs:no /hc:off /m normal /j "Nightly" /l:s /f "\\DOMAINCONTROLLERNAME\C$\Backup_DCNAME\%DIRSTR%DCNAME.bkf"

 

EXIT

 

:SKIP

 

C:\WINDOWS\system32\ntbackup.exe backup "@\\DOMAINCONTROLLERNAME \c$\Backup_DCNAME \night.bks" /n "DCNAME.bkf" /d "SS_Nightly" /v:yes /r:no /rs:no /hc:off /m normal /j "SS_Nightly" /l:s /f "\\DOMAINCONTROLLERNAME\C$\Backup_DCNAME\%DIRSTR%DCNAME.bkf"

 

EXIT

            *** END BAT FILE ***

 

Comments and legend for the above batch file.

 

First I turn of echo

Next section builds the current date, we will use this to sort the backup and delete ones older than 7 days.

If not exist statement is useful if you store anything on a SAN drive. If they SAN is down normally the backup will fail, so I check before and then just run night to just backup the system state.

First backup runs a backup of the DOMAINCONTROLLERNAME (replace with a real name), creates a new file called DCNAME.bkf (replace with server name), next I label the backup Nightly, verify is then turned on, restricted access is NOT turned on – you may want it though (so /r:yes would turn it on), hardware compression is turned off, the backup type is set to normal, next the job name is set for backup reporting, next logging is set to summary, and finally the file name is created with the date and time stamp at the front (again for sorting and deleting older files later).

 

4)       To schedule a task to automatically backup a machine. Go to Start-> Control Panel -> Scheduled Tasks -> Add Scheduled Task.  During the configuration the following options are selected:

 

Scheduled Task Wizard	Next
Scheduled Task Wizard Application	Browse C:\backup\tools\nightlybackup.bat Open
Scheduled Task Wizard Type a name for this task Perform this task	Nightly Daily Next
Scheduled Task Wizard Start Time Perform this task Start date	3:15 AM Every Day (today) Next
Scheduled Task Wizard Enter the user name Enter the password Confirm password	Next
Scheduled Task Wizard Open advanced…	Unchecked Finish

 

5)      Finally I use robocopy to clean up, so the backup won’t fill up the disk.

c:\backup\tools\robocopy c:\backup\ c:\backup\t *.bkf /MOV /MINAGE:10 rd /q /s c:\backup\t

I use Robocopy to look at the c:\backup and create a c:\backup\t folder (for temporary). I look for anything that ends with .bkf which is then Moved to the temporary (c:\backup\t) folder, if it is at least 10 days old. This process is done quietly and uses a sub directory of c:\backup\t.

 

Enjoy, let me know if you have any questions or issues.

Join Kevin Remde, Sr. IT Professional Evangelist and Shanen Boettcher, General Manager in the Server & Tools Division on the US team at Microsoft, as they discuss Hyper-V in Windows Server & System Center and how Microsoft Virtualization solutions can cost less and help you maximize the return on your virtualization investment.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 RC helps you achieve new levels of reliability and performance by delivering features that simplify your administration, protect your communications, and delight your users by meeting their demands for greater business mobility.

Microsoft is pleased to announce the release of Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 SP2 to the web. WSUS 3.0 SP2 supports the new releases of Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Get the latest information, tools, and downloads for WSUS 3.0 SP2 at Windows Server Update Services 3.0 Service Pack 2.

In this session we will discuss the core security features of Windows 7 and explore their usage scenarios.

In this webcast, we discuss how you can build a fault-tolerant, high-availability server solution with Windows Server 2008 failover clustering that also facilitates disaster recovery.

Building on the momentum of SQL Server 2008, “R2” improves IT efficiency by reducing the time and cost of developing and managing applications; empowers end users to make better decisions through Self-Service Business Intelligence and enables organizations to scale with confidence by providing high levels of reliability, security and scalability for business critical applications.

Join us for this session and learn how to make it happen. We'll show you how to leverage your existing development resources and PHP knowledge by simply changing the back-end to Microsoft SQL Server 2008.