Wol's House

Another vote for the file copy / synchronisation method of backup.

I use Robocopy on my WHS 2011 server to copy my data to an internal backup disk and to several external backup disks on a scheduled rotation. All scripted and it just works.

I do make use of the Windows Server Backup utility to keep an image of my boot / system hard drive so that I can recover the OS with minimal effort should the drive fail.

I have, for more than fifteen years, employed the file copy method on my PC to obtain "local" backups of my data. This takes to form of a batch file and (here's a blast from the past) tar and gzip utilities to copy all user data and configuration to a secoind hard drive.

I have extensive experience of backup programs used in the enterprise environment and can provide many horror stories of the struggles in recovering data from supposedly valid backups, with the added pressure of a business on stop until the recovery is complete. This is all with the best practice of test, test, test when it comes to recovery.

This experience has taught me to keep things simple at home and minimise the reliance on third-party programs in protecting what is important to you. Oh, and do test recovery from time to time

Me paranoid? With respect to recovery, yes I am!

I was curious if it's implemented like some Dell computers where, once you install and add-in video card, it takes over and you can't use the onboard video at all.

The HP ILO card does take over the video duties and the onboard video is disabled.

Whilst not cheap, the card is full-featured unlike HPs ILO option on most of their servers where upgrade keys are required for the extras such as virtual KVM and virtual media.

With a copy of WHS 2011 on a USB stick plugged into my laptop, I installed WHS on my microserver with the server in the basement and myself sat on the sofa in the lounge (was being sociable with the family ). Full console access (including BIOS) and power ability, all from the comfort of the sofa.

Entirely unnecssary (apart from the social bit, of course) but good, geeky fun.

A quick note to add that I have been using 3x 2TB EARX drives in my Microserver since October 2011 and they haven't missed a beat.

Two are acting as a mirrored pair (using Windows Server mirroring) and the third is a standalone drive for server backups.

I'll post back if I find any issues.

Diehard is correct; there is no sleep mode aka S3 suspend to RAM. HP have confirmed via their forums that they are not considering adding the feature in the future. Hibernation mode works just fine when using WHS 2011.

I purchased the remote access card for my MicroServer which allows me to remotely power on and off the server as and when required. This may not meet your requirements but does work very well.

Rather late at replying but in case it helps, here are two applications that may meet your needs:

FastStone

Raw Therapee