Chapter 18 is all about backing up. Entire books have been written on this subject and they are needful. However, this chapter is a good primer on backing up SBS. The chapter begins with backup issues. It goes into various reasons to back up whether they be regulatory, risk avoidance, or recovery. These are all good reasons to back up and other reasons are looked at as well. Hardware and media are discussed next. Maybe you want to backup to a CD, DVD, external harddrive, local harddrive and then move the file to some other location. Perhaps you like tape drives? All of these are great tools. One point to make is, these are tools, so use the right tool for your job. NTBackup will not backup to CD or DVD automatically.

The backup plan is next. What? You say you don't have a plan? Then buy the book and get a plan! Nine points are laid out for you to consider when making this plan. Site and security comes up next. Once you make your backup and put it on your media of choice, where are you going to store it? In a fireproof box? Offsite? If so, where? One block, one mile or one thousand miles away? Is your area prone to hurricanes? Tornadoes? Earthquakes? These points and more should be considered when offline storage is considered.

A primer on backup types such as full, differential, incremental and copy are discussed next. If you are shaky on these concepts, read these three pages and take out the shake! What is a backup without a schedule? You want to kick off your backup each night don't you without standing in front of the machine? Then schedule that job and relax at home! Media rotation is shown in a nice table on page 448 that will help your plan what we spoke about earlier.

What is the SBS mantra? Use the wizard! Is backup different? It most certainly is not. You have a backup wizard, so use it! Shadow copies are turned on here so it is a good practice to use the wizard. Two tables are laid out to show you what the backup wizard can and cannot do. Hint: the cannot do list is about three times as long as the can do list! Don't let that scare you however. It can do a good enough job for most people out of the box. Would you like to know what the wizard does? If so, the next few pages in the chapter are for you. It dives into the deep and dirty parts of what this wizard does for you in a few mouse clicks.

Using NTBackup is up next. Maybe you should make your backup strategy complete several different jobs? Maybe you just back up your Exchange data in one job? Your important data in another. Various databases in another. These topics are covered well enough to get you thinking about where your head should be in this discussion. Third party tools are talked about, but not by name as to not endorse one above another. Remember, these are tools and you should use the proper tool for your job at hand.

Disaster strikes! What now? Luckily, the book has this discussion. First, are you testing your restores? If not, start. If so, good for you. Pat yourself on the back. If your server is down, what kind of hardware will you restore to? Similar, dissimilar? These are all points that should be known and practiced. The chapter closes out with some decent troubleshooting tips. This chapter is like Ragu sauce. You need to backup your server? It's in there! This chapter was a good read as well as an easy one. If you are a backup guru, you may get bored. Anyone short of guru status, you will learn something or find some value in this chapter. This chapter is yet another good resaon why you should buy this book. What's next? Monitoring and reporting are next. Stay tuned so you can monitor me!