Hi everyone. I'm new to VMWare. We are a very small business and I am looking to use VMWare to achieve a very basic disaster recovery procedure for us. With the free VMWare Server and VMWare player will I be able to achieve the following?
1. Create an image (daily) of our server and store that image on an external hard disk that I can take off site and keep in a safe place.
2. In the event of our server failing, use this image to run a virtual version of our server, enabling us to log in normally and work without too much disruption.
3. When our server is then fixed, or we buy a replacement, be able to backup the "virtual" server and restore that to our newly fixed or replacement server and get back to normal?
My main problem is budget. We cannot afford to spend money on virtualisation etc so I am looking into cheaper or free alternatives that can achieve the same results, albeit, with more downtime etc.
Currently we only use NT Backup to backup to tapes, which are kept offsite, and not being an IT expert, I am not sure how efficient this is, or how easy it would be to restore our server from these backups.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Regards
Steve