ADSM-L

Re: Techniques for restoring a complete NT server

2015-10-04 17:59:02
Subject: Re: Techniques for restoring a complete NT server
From: Jeff Connor [SMTP:connorj AT NIMO DOT COM]
To: ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
Here's another option that's going to be available later this
summer...Hopefully!

     We had a meeting with STAC software yesterday regarding their new
partnership with IBM/ADSM and it sounds
promising.  They have a product called Replica that backs up logical drives
using their object replication technology and only backs up areas of the
drive that contain data. IBM has partnered with STAC to provide yet another
option for bare metal restore of Netware Window NT clients.  The short
version of how the products will work together for Windows NT bare metal
restore is as follows:

Preparation:

1. Create boot floppies for your NT client using Replica
2. Perform periodic full backups of your C: drive (weekly?).**
3. Perform daily ADSM incrementals on all drives (C: optional?)
** The replica backups currently are stored on an tape media attached
either directly to the NT client or to another NT
     machine on the network.  Later this year they plan to add an option to
write the Replica backups to ADSM storage
    pools using the ADSM API.

Bare Metal restore:

1. Boot NT system from Replica floppies
2. Restore C: drive using Replica (tape today, from ADSM server storage
pools later this year)
3. Restore other drives using ADSM client which became available when the
C: drives was restored using Replica.

Because Replica does a logical  backup versus a disk image backup as with
the DRM option offered by ADSM, the new machine you are restoring to does
not have to have the same drive geometry as the original machine.  Sound
good
but there are, like with all options, some issues I think we need think
about.

I can see that the frequency of Replica backups could be a factor like in a
scenario where you run weekly full backups of
your C: drive using replica and incremental backups of using ADSM on the
entire machine every day.  If some files existed
on the C: drive on the weekend and were deleted later in the week, you
might end up with unwanted files when you recover.
I would also think that in the weekly Relica and daily ADSM backup scenario
that during a bare metal restore you would
probably have to perform a restore of the C: drive using ADSM, maybe with
IFNEWER option, after your Replica restore of the C: drive to be sure your
current.  I'm not sure about the details like this yet but in theory using
Replica with ADSM for bare metal restore sounds like an appealing option.
For more info on Replica go to www.stac.com...

Jeff Connor
Niagara Mohawk Power
Syracuse, NY






Eric van Loon <evanloon AT KLM DOT NL> on 04/16/98 04:59:22 AM

Please respond to "ADSM: Dist Stor Manager" <ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU>

To:   ADSM-L AT VM.MARIST DOT EDU
cc:    (bcc: Jeffrey P Connor/IT/NMPC)
Subject:  Re: Techniques for restoring a complete NT server




Hi Taylor!
If you have a version 3 server and you are licensed to use the Disaster
Recovery Manager you can download a set of 6 disks from IBM which allows
you to use the "DRM Stand-alone Dump/Restore" facility.
You can use this to recover from a harddisk crash. However, if you machine
crashes and you want to recover on different hardware you can't use this
feature either.
Ghost is also a very nice application (it can dump and restore single
partitions while ADSM's DRM can only handle complete disks) but also not
usable when restoring to different hardware.
I wonder if there is a product which allows one to do this. Since NT stores
several hardware specific parameters in it's registry and NT isn't at all
plug-and-play compatible I see no other way than to do a full re-install...
In Windows 95 one can enter the save-mode, delete all previously detected
devices and restart in the normal mode. Windows will then re-detect all
devices, included newly added hardware. This is one of the nice features of
plug-and-play. NT is not that flexible. However, Microsoft indicated that
full plug-and-play will be available in Windows NT 5.0. This should make
our lives easier.
Kindest regards,
Eric van Loon


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