Should I back up the operating system files?
We hear a lot about single-instance storage; single-instance backup. When you start backing up operating system files, you will have the same .DLL, for example, on each of your Windows servers -- you may have 100 servers. I would say, if you have a small environment, I wouldn't worry too much about it. But, once you start growing into a larger environment, you probably should not backup operating system files.
@24686 That said, the OS files should be protected, so we have ghosting products. We have products that allow you to virtualize some of your servers (e.g., VMware) where you can create a live copy of your system living somewhere else. These allow you to not back up your operating system files -- you don't want to have to do this backup. However, you want to back up your system objects such as a Windows registry because there's a lot of settings in there that you don't want to reapply.
But as far as the OS files -- the ones that are installed -- I would say get some system images that are updated frequently as your operating system changes, and keep the OS content out of your backup loop. Your backups should really protect your dynamic application data and not the OS files. You can have terabytes and terabytes of data that is stored on tape, and when you try and restore your systems, typically you're going to rebuild an OS and then restore your data. So, why did you back up these OS files in the first place?
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