Server Backups

[K-Max]

What would be the best way to do backups of a dedicated server?

I am looking to "rent" a dedicated server in the near future and I've been musing over this issue. The package basically offers 60GB of HD, 1000 GB of Bandwidth, 512 MB, Celeron 1.7 GHZ. I'm not too worried about CPU power since I'll start off pretty small. I'll proabably get a Windows 2003 Server (for Windows Media 9 Services among other things).

So, what should I use to implement an effective backup method? (ie, Tape. 2nd Hard Drive, RAID?)

I've found an ISP close to home, so hopefully getting there in person won't be a problem.

I also have a couple other questions... but I'll add them later..

Thanks.

[fishfreek]

Im not fimular with windows servers but im sure there is plenty of software out there and something might even be built in to to do remedial backups.

I like to backup the data to a secondary disk on a daily/weekly/monthly schedule and then for even added protection on occasion transfer the archived weekly/monthly backups off the second disk to a remote location.

Tapes are to slow and unless you can frequent the data center and swap out tapes they will over time degrade.

[K-Max]

So I would guess a hot swappable removable HD would be the best thing then?

Also, despite the media hype about Windows Security, is it really that bad? I still see businesses use IIS as their web server. I'd still prefer using apache, but I don't think the control panel (They use Helm) for W2003 servers support apache.

[Jonathan Lee]

Those 120GB removable firewire or USB harddrives work well,
but moving data is pretty slow unless you're using USB2.0.
However, they're great for transportation.

Or if you have a spare server, you can automate the backup process by setting up a
mirrored internal network and backup to there via cron job.
You can even do it so that all the necessary files are replicated,
and if your other server is having major hardware problems, you simply
unplug the old server and reroute traffic to the backup server.