Bob Hetzel wrote: >I've never been able to get the bare-metal restore to work doing a restore >starting from a Live CD. I last tried it over a year ago and people >responded a while later saying they got it to work that way and they would >update a web page with said info but it appears never to have happened. >That would be far simpler than messing with the windows ASR disks. I was >able to get the files restored but couldn't make the system fully windows >bootable. If anybody has done some recent bare-metal restoring for >windows, please update the wiki page or put up another page somewhere else >and link to it.
We currently have ~300 Windows servers under Bacula control with many more to come. I can assure you that BMR of Windows 2003 on similar hardware is not a problem when using a BartPE liveCD. On dissimilar hardware we have had good luck with reinstalling onto a VM (or even onto another physical box with a little help of StorageCraft) We have done countless restore tests of Domain Controllers, SQL servers, etc - all without any major issues. We had 2 day PoC with Bacula Systems earlier this year - the responsible support engineer from BS promised to put our joint notes on the wiki. >Also, there have been conflicting messages posted on here about whether >bacula restores windows junction points in the current version or if it >still just complains about not wanting to back them up (it still complains >but I don't know for sure if that means it doesn't want to traverse through >them or if it's actually backing up the junction point as a special file >system item at all). I have yet to see problems under W2K3 - there is some strangeness under W2K8 (especially anything lower than R2). >Off the topic of bacula for a second, what did you mean by "PS MS SQL >Server v5 is involved here." ? Did you mean MS SQL 2005 or MySql 5? > >MySQL does not support VSS. MS SQL does (but only in the 2005 and later >version I presume) but if your db is doing a lot of writes I wouldn't rely >on it--for trying to do a fully 100% safe restore of a database engine (or >anything else if you're not wanting writes made after you back it up to be >lost completely) you really need to shut the db engine down, take the >backup, then work on the restore. Otherwise you risk having people think >stuff got updated when those updates are about to get lost. For regular >backups, it's not necessary to shut the db down but if you know you're >going to wipe the drive after the backup you really want to eliminate all >writes that can't be lost before taking the final backup. We have written our own tool to do the MSSQL backup - currently we are backing up at least 100 MSSQL instances without any major pain. > Bob > >> From: Bruno Friedmann <br...@ioda-net.ch> >> Subject: Re: [Bacula-users] bare metal windows server 2003 restore >> To: bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net >> Message-ID: <4c125566.4030...@ioda-net.ch> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 >> >> Hi Gavin >> >> How would you restore a VSS snapshot without having VSS ( in you linux live >> cd ) ? >> That's the real question. >> >> So yes yours steps are naive (in my opinion). What is described in the wiki >> are the rights step. >> >> Otherwise, if you don't change your hardware, and just want to arrange some >> partionning, with the help of having store place >> somewhere ( network or usb ) you could do it directly offline with a live cd >> ( systemrescuecd ) and ntfsclone >> save all your data, adjust partitionning , save the mbr ( but you don't need >> to change it ) >> and restore with ntfsclone. >> >> You're done ... and yes no need of bacula ( but I would certainly have a >> full backup of the system ) >> don't forget to generate the system state snapshot like mentionned in wiki >> if you are not doing it already ... >> >> Do a chkdsk /F and a reboot before cloning just to be sure ntfs are in good >> shape. >> >> >> On 06/11/2010 03:57 PM, Gavin McCullagh wrote: >>> > Hi, >>> > >>> > we have a windows server 2003 server here and realised that its disk setup >>> > is in such a bad way that we want to reinstall it. Never having done one, >>> > we thought it would be nice to try a bare metal restore of the machine >>> > from >>> > the backups (to spare disks). Both c:\ and d:\ drives are entirely backed >>> > up by Bacula using VSS. >>> > >>> > I was expecting to: >>> > >>> > 1. Put a linux live cd in the server and boot it. >>> > 2. Partition the disk(s) appropriately. Format them appropriately (NTFS). >>> > 3. Start a bacula-fd in linux. >>> > 4. Tell the bacula-dir to restore that server entirely through the running >>> > bacula-fd (probably need to do c:\ and d:\ separately). >>> > 5. Restore the MBR somehow (windows recovery cd maybe?) >>> > 6. Cross my fingers and reboot. >>> > >>> > However, when I looked at the wiki, I found this article which seems a >>> > little more complex. >>> > >>> > http://wiki.bacula.org/doku.php?id=windows_bare_metal_recovery:ntbackup >>> > >>> > Are my steps [1-5] extremely naive? Would that not work? Do I have to go >>> > the way the wiki page says? I thought I recalled someone suggesting that >>> > [1-6] should work. >>> > >>> > Many thanks in advance for any info, >>> > >>> > Gavin >>> > >>> > PS MS SQL Server v5 is involved here. Should having VSS mean that's okay >>> > to just restore directly? We do have database backups if need be, but it >>> > would be nice if that wasn't needed. >>> > >>> > >> >> -- Bruno Friedmann > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate >GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the >lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: >http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo >_______________________________________________ >Bacula-users mailing list >Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users -- Med venlig hilsen / Best Regards Henrik Johansen hen...@scannet.dk Tlf. 75 53 35 00 ScanNet Group A/S ScanNet ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ThinkGeek and WIRED's GeekDad team up for the Ultimate GeekDad Father's Day Giveaway. ONE MASSIVE PRIZE to the lucky parental unit. See the prize list and enter to win: http://p.sf.net/sfu/thinkgeek-promo _______________________________________________ Bacula-users mailing list Bacula-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bacula-users
