Jen,

I can see why the IT person may have recommended that you keep the server.

You can not use two SBS 2003 servers in the same domain, the SBS server must be the root domain and the primary domain controller. You can only add a regular Win2003 server to a SBS 2003 domain. If you're just going to keep the old server "in the corner" and just use it off the network to access the old records that may not be such a bad idea. Perhaps the transition to a new server is more trouble than it is worth.

A flash drive and a thumb drive are the same.

I agree with the above posts but I am not sure that a small office server installation would need a RAID 0 (edit-I meant RAID 1 not RAID 0) plus RAID 5 set up. Although this is a good set up if you can set it up.

How long you need to keep the back up is up to considerable debate.
There are two types of back up. First the back up to keep your OS, AC, etc programs up and running. Maintaining a back up of the OS install to keep the server and computers running. Data backup to restore should the hard drive or hardware fail. Basically to keep your network and software running.
The other type of back up is a "data" back up. This consists of daily, weekly and monthly back ups. Maintaining "snapshots" on a monthly basis of your database helps to protect against data corruption. If something happens to corrupt the database but you do not realize it for several weeks/months you would have a real problem if you could not go back to known working database. Hopefully such a thing would not happen but it is better to be safe.

There is no perfect answer to amount of back ups to perform or how long you want to keep the back up on hand. It is a mater of how much risk you want to take and how much you want to spend. Although you should at least maintain daily backups of your AC and snapshot back ups monthly. And DO NOT make the process difficult, a back up plan that is not usable is just as bad as no back up plan.

Geoff

PS

When are we going to get around to posting these ideas on the Wiki page instead of the forum, back solutions, server set ups, etc.

Last edited by thomgeo1; 01/15/2009 3:42 AM.