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I was wondering what plans other practices had in place for when there server goes down and you cant reach your AC database..
I was just thinking about it because its now 1am and I cant get my sever back online since the microsoft update restart 6 hours ago. In 7 hours I will have an office full of staff and patients wondering what [censored] came up with the bright idea off going paperless....

Do you have a backup on another drive ? If so you can just point all your computers to that drive or computer and change that way.

Thanks
I have backups but I have 32 pcs pointing at the server. and the network goes through the server? So just restore the database to a pc and point the others to it? Can you switch from sever to P2P at will?

Basically yes as long as the drive can be shared - and you are running the programs on each computer and not running AC on the server .. If you want I can give you my phone number if you don't understand this.

that makes sense I just have never tried it.
I am reinstalling 2003 right now and am praying that I can get it reblt by this am

Hopefully you backup the whole AC files - I actually just back up by using Windows Explorer and just copy the whole AC folder to a Network Attached Storage drive - then you could just copy it to a computer drive, set it to store and then point your computers to it.

Good luck.

I have multiple backups but I am rethinking my methods.
When everything started going ugly this afternoon I made a full copy of AC on a thumb drive just in case.
Thanks for the support

You should have good luck - try to get some sleep.

Sleep are kidding..Coffee coffeeee cofffffeeee
MUST MAKE SYSTEM WORK!!
I will win.

Server UP sort of.. It wants to reboot again and wants up dates...
I think I will wait till this weekend to reboot..just in case.
I still want some better solutions for some kind of hot swap we can implement mid day incase of a glitch some where.
Any thoughts out there?

One option is to outfit one cheap computer as a backup server - just make it with a cheap server software (EBAY server 2000) and a different name - use it as one of your daily backups and when your real server goes down - change the name of the backup server and use it. The only problem is the number of computers and a license to match that many users, although I bought Server 2003 Enterprise with 75 CAL for 600.00 on eBay. Otherwise use P2P and a backup NAS drive - 1 terabyte is available for under $300.00.

great idea I still have a copy of 2000 and I have one profile we use in the pt rooms so licenses shouldn't be a problem

Hi Beau,

Wow, completely reformatting Win 2003 overnight. Yikes. Talk about reconnecting 32 PCs. How do you run 32 PCs off Access? That's a pretty good feat right there.

Here is what I do having had a similar problem once:

I have my server, but then I have my person PC which is probably as powerful as the server. I use a batch file to back up all of my databases including AC's folder to a folder on my PC. I run this every night by clicking on the batch file. So, in effect, the folder on my computer is identical to the one on the server. You could use SyncToy or any syncing software. Batch files are just cheap and easy.

I then share that folder. I then go to all of my PCs and map that folder to that computer. Now I have the AC folder on each comptuer. Every time I do the backup batch file, I have identical AC databases on each computer. Well, mapped folders anyway.

So, now if your server crashes, you go to each computer, and set your path to the mapped folders. Of course, you could just browse to the new "pseudoserver" but it just makes it that much easier.

The only thing you have to be careful of is making sure none of your users connects to the mapped drive by mistake.

hth

Not doing it ourselves but there are lots of both expensive and reasonably priced NAS solutions out there. Now the server should matter not to a large extent. All peers are pointed to the NAS no matter what.

This is why I like being small and running P2P with two decent towers in the office. If the new tower has a glitch (RAID 1 so less likely, but ya never know...) then we could always switch back to the old tower for a few days to keep us up and running. We also have at least one too many laptops now, so one dead laptop shouldn't kill us either. We now have 5 computers and 3 users between the two towers and the three laptops.

we too copy the entire AC folder each night to two different yet identical drives. One stays on site, locked in a fire and water proof safe that is locked in the drug cabinet while the other goes home in a laptop bag each and every night. Cheap and simple off-site back up...

There is one preventative measure that you could employ in this situation. The use of Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage would allow you to make an identical snapshot of the drive that you could restore in a pinch. You would set up a back schedule with regular imaging (also I usually image my initial installs of my computers that I set up at home). If the windows install goes bad then just restore the image that worked previously. This is system restore on steriods. This makes repairing a trashed computer much, much easier since you can avoid having to go through the hassle of a windows install. Only the size of the back up and drive is main determinant of the time it takes but usually a couple of hours depending on the setup.

This wiki article can explain disk cloning (imaging) better that I can :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloning

You will have to buy the more expensive server editions, I know for a fact that Acronis home will not install on a windows server. I do not know of any good open source (freeware) solutions.

I will point out that imaging the drive is not a very good "backup" solution but rather a hardware/software failure solution.

Acronis True Image Server or SBS Edition is awesome. I use Acrois to back up my server every night along with NTBackup using Backup Assist. It does cost $699.00 though. You definitely would not want to use the Home Edition even if it would install. In edition to what Thomas has pointed out, the image file can be browsed as if it were the actual computer.

Bert,

Because neither my new IT guy nor I could easily figure out my current tape back-up software (TapeWare) I am interested in what program you use. Do you use Backup Assist to back up to a tape drive? If not, WILL it back up to multiple different drives, such as tape, external hard drive...

Leslie