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skg · Guest

What are the differences between Std and enterprise versions? When would you choose Enterprise?

Joseph J. Hand · Guest

Clustering, greater amounts of memory and CPUs, and many more features...
There is a feature comparison for Windows Server editions that applies to
WSS as well here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/evaluation/features/compareeditions.mspx

So... if you wanted a simple file server device that housed data in a
redundant, safe, and efficient manner, you would probably choose the
Standard version. If you were looking to keep it available in case of a
catastrophic hardware failure, site failure, Godzilla attack, etc... you'd
lead with the Enterprise edition. There is also a VSS transport on the
latter, so if snapshots are important on the box, and you don't want to pay
7M for an expensive backend disk solution... you would want the Enterprise
edition as well... If it were just shares of user data, standard backup
approached work fine.

You must weigh the costs vs. the needs and justify it appropriately. What I
find with IT budget spending these days is that money exists for projects
today, where it was tough to buy a cable 2 years ago... but you now need to
make better decisions. Speak to the vendor and see what value add they
provide on top of both platforms. More often than not, they will provide
tools to measure ROI (Return on Investment) that will help you in the
justification process and steer you in the right direction on your decision.

hope this helps.

jh

"skg" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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Joseph J. Hand · Guest

ok, this is how I understand it... this is not necessarily the actual
answer... it is partly based on opinions...

VSS ships with all versions. VSS consists of 3 different layers. They are:

Writers (things like Exchange 2003)
Requestors (NTBackup, Backup Exec)
Providers (Copy on Write, EMC TimeFinder, VERITAS FlashSnap, etc...)

The Copy on Write (COW) provider is built into Windows 2003 all versions and
provides a file level snapshot, saving space because it only keeps the
changes in the place you designate. The downside is that you only have the
original volume and the snaps. If you lose the original, you lose
everything. Also, if you want to mount the snap for point in time backup,
you will still be impacting the main drive from a performance perspective.
Third parties like EMC and VERITAS sell solutions that work through the VSS
infrastructure at the provider level. These tools provide volume level
instead of file level snapshots and can allow for off host processing and
backup of data.

It is my understanding that some hardware providers of the WSS offerings
have added some third party VSS Volume level providers to some of their
offerings. These may solve your problems, but based on what
options/componenets you buy.

jh

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skg · Guest

skg · Guest

Thanks for all of your help

I just need to be clear on enterprise vs std. My provider said that

VSS storage transport is only available on Enterprise. My Microsoft guys says "VSS Transport enables you to do is to move a series of snapshots from one server to another. That would be the only scenario where they would need the Transportability feature.

Would be the feature I need to take advantage of snapshot copy using the 3rd party vendors you spoke of? This would allow the volume level snapshots.

Can these snapshots be on any type of storage on any server?

Joseph J. Hand · Guest

The whole "Any type of storage/hardware" goes out the window when you buy
from one hardware vendor. If you want true heterogeneity, either
- stay with the server vendor (so long as their solution is not tied to
a specific disk vendor),
- use Microsoft's tools (if available),
- or go with a third party software vendor (if you are comfortable
adding another vendor to the mix).

Offloading to a secondary host is expensive. Mirror break offs and snapshots
cost double (or more) the disk. Carefully evaluate need in your environment
and see what kind of uptime and speed are actually required. You may find
that working towards the ability to do snapshots next year or the year after
are good and that it is not critical today. That would allow you time to
research and build the environment accordingly, over a period of time.

good luck,

jh

"skg" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
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