I'm looking for a second opinion as I have no experience of MySQL running on Windows. MySQL and Windows is already set in stone so there is no changing that.

A friend and I are to deploy a MySQL-database and I'm not too sure how to go about with backups. As there will be users constantly using the database and we will want to back it up (in a consistent state) every 15 minutes we were thinking of setting up a slave database and run the backups on that. That way, I've been told, the users won't be affected by any flushing of tables. We will also be backing up the host itself every 15 minutes with ShadowProtect.

This could be done with a script but we'd prefer to have a third party tool taking care of this. Preferably with a GUI as it should be "easy to use". I've been recommended SwordSky Auto Backup for MySQL but I must admit their site doesn't give me a lot of confidence. Also I can't seem to find any reviews or thoughts of it.

Has anyone had any experience with SwordSky or similarly purposed software? Any input is highly appreciated, thanks! :-)

P.S: Has Oracle closed open access to forums.mysql.com or has it always been closed?