Backup and Restore at your facility

[becs 0]

Our company is trying to implement Sharepoint, which is a microsoft product made for handling and sotring documents. After initial talks with the IT people implementing the system my boss and I were convinced that we should also store our program backups from the floor (PLC programs, etc). Well, months later I start storing my files here, and it seems that it can't handle files other than .doc, .xml, etc, very well. The IT person doesn't seem interested in trying to help me make it work either. At another plant, a long long time ago, I was in charge of implimeting Cimplicity Manager as a backup and retore interface. It was based on listings in a database that would point to the correct files on a specified server. You could also scripts to automatically launch the correct software to run the file and such. At this new plant I'm just saving all my files on some server space allocated and working with Windows Explorer. Even though I'm the only one who ever uses these files it can still be kinda sloppy. At your company how are you dealing with file backups? I'm trying to figure out a better way to do this that's still economical.

[JRoss 84]

I contracted for a company that used Sharepoint for documentation, etc, but they used a system called Virtual Safe Source (VSS) for program files.

[Joe E. 259]

Our system is even messier than yours, since we have 4 people with personal network access who work with the backups and an additional 6 or 8 who work with the machines, all using 7 or 8 computers, only 4 of which have access to the corporate LAN where we store the backups. It is an out-of-control disaster that I've been trying without success to get a handle on for 2 years now. It would be simpler if we could get wireless network access for the maintenance laptops on the floor, but we haven't been able to get the IS part working reliably enough.

[becs 0]

Yes, I think it's a hrad thing to get a handle on. The system I used built in Cimplicity Manager was really slick, but I don't think I want to get that fancy. Mostly I'm looking for something that will require Check-In/Out and handle versioning. JRoss - I looked at VSS a little, it certainly has the structure that I'm looking for. Does it handle all the random extensions you load into it from your backups? I assume that the SharePoint system that you have in place and the VSS system are totally seperate?