Need Recommendation for Bare Metal Recovery

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dragon
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Dragon

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Hi,

We have many remote sites with small servers. I am looking for a solution to
make a daily backup of these server for bare metal recovery purposes. These
servers are non-critical and all their data is available from central
location. goal here not to provide fully redundent recovery but to speed up
recovery time. We can always get another server, and download all of the
informatiom from the central location. But if I have an expensive solution
(USB?) that I can plug into the server and simply restore the OS and
existing data from the device, it will make recovery faster than manually
installing OS and downloading data from the central.

It could be as simple a a USB drive/Flash key along with some inexpensive
software that provides complete backup (snapshot?) of a system and allows
you to restore it to a new server/hard disk. Cost is a major concern here.

Thank you.
 
Re: Need Recommendation for Bare Metal Recovery


"Dragon" <nospam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:OeLXkIiHJHA.1160@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> Hi,
>
> We have many remote sites with small servers. I am looking for a solution
> to make a daily backup of these server for bare metal recovery purposes.
> These servers are non-critical and all their data is available from
> central location. goal here not to provide fully redundent recovery but to
> speed up recovery time. We can always get another server, and download all
> of the informatiom from the central location. But if I have an expensive
> solution (USB?) that I can plug into the server and simply restore the OS
> and existing data from the device, it will make recovery faster than
> manually installing OS and downloading data from the central.
>
> It could be as simple a a USB drive/Flash key along with some inexpensive
> software that provides complete backup (snapshot?) of a system and allows
> you to restore it to a new server/hard disk. Cost is a major concern here.
>
> Thank you.

Convenience and cost usually run in opposite directions. If you want a
convenient and largely automated process then an imaging product such as
Acronis TrueImage would be your best bet. If you need to keep a lid on costs
then you should a Bart PE boot CD. Here is how it works:

a) To create an image:
- Plug in & format a USB disk.
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
- Use robocopy.exe to copy the whole system partition to the USB disk.

b) To perform a recovery:
- Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
- Partition & format the disk and mark the system partition active.
- Use robocopy.exe to copy the USB disk to the system partition.

If your USB disks are sufficiently large then you can copy several system
partitions to it, each into its own folder.
 
Re: Need Recommendation for Bare Metal Recovery

Thank you Pegasus.
I like the Acronis idea, I'll just have to see if I can get my budget to fit
around it or find something similar to do that same with a bit less expense.

I am thinking 16GB flash drive is more than enough for my use as the biggest
site with data has less than 6GB of total disk usage (including OS).

I have used the Bart CD but only for initial imaging of a system. If I am
going to get a Flash disk, then I rather have the image be updated on a
nightly basis. If I were to use Bart's disk, then I don't really need a
flash disk, I can simply get away with having an image on a DVD to load from
and have the DVD bootable as well.

Thank you.



"Pegasus (MVP)" <I.can@fly.com.oz> wrote in message
news:%23X2QTfiHJHA.728@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>
> "Dragon" <nospam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:OeLXkIiHJHA.1160@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>> Hi,
>>
>> We have many remote sites with small servers. I am looking for a solution
>> to make a daily backup of these server for bare metal recovery purposes.
>> These servers are non-critical and all their data is available from
>> central location. goal here not to provide fully redundent recovery but
>> to speed up recovery time. We can always get another server, and download
>> all of the informatiom from the central location. But if I have an
>> expensive solution (USB?) that I can plug into the server and simply
>> restore the OS and existing data from the device, it will make recovery
>> faster than manually installing OS and downloading data from the central.
>>
>> It could be as simple a a USB drive/Flash key along with some inexpensive
>> software that provides complete backup (snapshot?) of a system and allows
>> you to restore it to a new server/hard disk. Cost is a major concern
>> here.
>>
>> Thank you.
>
> Convenience and cost usually run in opposite directions. If you want a
> convenient and largely automated process then an imaging product such as
> Acronis TrueImage would be your best bet. If you need to keep a lid on
> costs then you should a Bart PE boot CD. Here is how it works:
>
> a) To create an image:
> - Plug in & format a USB disk.
> - Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
> - Use robocopy.exe to copy the whole system partition to the USB disk.
>
> b) To perform a recovery:
> - Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.
> - Partition & format the disk and mark the system partition active.
> - Use robocopy.exe to copy the USB disk to the system partition.
>
> If your USB disks are sufficiently large then you can copy several system
> partitions to it, each into its own folder.
>
 
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