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What is a virtual image?
How complicated do you want an off-site backup?
What kind of system are you backing up and how big is it?
What kind of system will receive and store your backup and how big is the
off-site system?
A virtual image is a disk that contains EVERY file that is on another disk,
although it was created file-by-file. It will boot as though it was created
using an image copy. They're several advantages to a virtual image, for me
at least. I can do differential and/or incremental virtual images which
would reduce WAN traffic considerably after the first go-round, and moving
files over a WAN is more reliable than moving large images.
I intend to co-locate to minimize downtime, if not almost eliminate it. Last
month I suffered failures of all kinds simultaneously, even on almost new
equipment. A failed motherboard, unreadable tapes, and a bouncing route, all
occurring immediately following a dual server hardware and win2k upgrade.
Oh, and I was out of the country for 3 weeks. So to answer your questions
about size and complexity, I'll let the data and applications drive the
degree of backup sophistication that I may ultimately have. But I don't want
to spend days in a hotel room on a laptop baby sitting computers half a
world away, again.
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