Good backup solution?

What's a good backup solution, that isn't too overcomplicated but would work well for some windows servers? Right now, we're using Handy backup. It's a $30 utility... and it works... except for when it doesn't.

BackupExec would be an excellent solution but it assumes you have some budget.

I would say at a minimum you'd want some sort of small tape changer, software to run it, and a plan that includes thinking about your data retention policies, knowing your data and what you need to resume business after a disaster, and also what sort of things you do restores for regularly. Also a reliable place off site to store your tapes.

Given more information I am sure I could provide a more detailed answer.

A word of wisdom that I saw once:

Never make a backup plan. Always make a restore plan.

Keeping this in mind changes the way you will think about the problem. What will you do if one of your servers actually does fall over? Where will the replacement hardware come from? How will you restore the data back to the server? What about all the installed services and whatnot? How long will you (or your business) expect to be down if this happens?

Once you have a restore plan, practice it every so often, like a fire drill. Restore a critical server into a virtual machine, and make sure the restore process works.