Searching reliable solution for OS X Server (on a MAC Mini) Backup, failover and redundancy

What about Time Machine?

For network backup, I'm partial to CrashPlan myself. I backup 4 Mac laptops and my Mom's iMac (300 miles away) to a Mac mini in the basement. Also the company I work for is going to be rolling out CrashPlan for desktop backup during the next year.

I would suggest breaking your question out into separate posts. That way the replies do not focus on just one aspect (such as backups) and loose your other questions.

RafaMertens wrote:

Time machine isn't really a reliable Backup, maybe for home users, but not really for a company environment.

And your evidence for that is what?

There are many, many elements to your question. Too many to answer without more details.

For example, you don't even mention what kind of services you're running.

A 'server' can do many things. Are you running directory services? DNS? DHCP? email? web? home directories? file sharing? more?

Each of these components has differing requirements for backup, redundancy and availability. Without knowing what services you're running it's hard to advise you on the best solutions.

How can you have "too much to backup"? That sounds oike your backu drive was too small. Time Machine is the best backup solution there has ever been. It redefined the task essentially put the rest of the backup industry out of business. There is a reason you can't find any other Mac backup solution other than shareware cloning tools. Time Machine killed them.

That article is almost 3 years old. Time Machine now supports bootable backups, encryption, and offsite backups. Time Machine Server is one of the key features of OS X Server.

Perhaps you should clarify just what you are trying to do. Are you trying to backup client machines or server data? With 30 GB of data, you are firmly in USB thumb drive territory. I can absolutely guarantee that Time Machine is more than adequate for that. If you are trying to backup client machines then Time Machine is still the best solution. Depending on what you are doing with those client machines, you may want either local or remote backups - or both. Again, not a problem for Time Machine.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5139

In this case I should take a look at P5 backup from Archiware http://www.archiware.com

http://www.archiware.comit's the best soloution I have seen for years.

And I agree with you Time Machine is't for buisiness installations, its a consumer product with to few configurable optins, lack of log files etc etc

etresoft, Thanks for the KB link. I was hoping that Apple had fixed the past problems of time machine backing up a server and I consider that artical a good indication that they have.