Software Recommendation for Bare Metal Backup of Server

Hello,

I hope I am posting this in the correct forum. I have two Windows 2000 servers that I regularly backup with Veritas Backup Exec 8.6. One of the servers is a web server that is running a SQL database. For peace of mind, I would like to create a Bare Metal Backup of each server, so in the event of a catastrophic failure I could restore my system image quickly and easily. Does anyone have a recommendation on affordable software to do this? I see some packages can cost $1,000 or more if you want to backup SQL or Exchange. That is way beyond my budget. It would be no problem for me to stop the SQL service temporarily for the backup if that is needed to get a complete image.

Thanks in advance!

 

g4u is a possible solution. Though it is Unix-based, you don't have to know Unix or have any Unix-type OS. g4u is free, but donations are requested. The only major disadvantage is you will have to completely bring down your server(s) and reboot.

You'll probably want a dedicated backup box, but you don't need much. A P3 1000 with Windows 2000 and GuildFTPd (free) should be plenty. You can give it hotswappable or USB hard drives for off-site backups. If you can't license another copy of Windows 2000, you could go with FreeBSD or a small Linux distribution. Of course, then, you would have to know Unix