On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 7:41 AM, James
Harper<james.harper AT bendigoit.com DOT au> wrote:
>>
>> I'm new to bacula and am considering it for a back up solution for a
> small
>> business.
>>
>> I've gotten the impression from reading the docs and wiki that it is
> difficult
>> to restore a windows system (like windows server 2003 for instance)
> after a
>> wipe.
>>
>> Couldn't I just reinstall the OS, the registry backup, and the windows
> bacula
>> client, reconfigure it and do a restore? I really only want some sql
> (ms sql,
>> mysql) databases, and a directory full of pdfs backed up nightly in
> case of a
>> failure or some kind of over write problem. What problems might I come
> across
>> trying this method? Thanks for any comments in advance.
>>
>> I just set up bacula on ubuntu 8.04 server, and have a couple win 2003
>> servers.
>
> Try it and see :)
>
> If the Windows 2003 machine(s) use normal SATA disks then buy some new
> ones, pick a good time for scheduled maintenance, take the original
> disks out, put the new blank ones in and enact your disaster recovery
> plan. Once you are done, put the original disks back. If your server has
> heaps of disks in it and you can't justify buying a complete new set to
> test your backups then just buy one and do a proof-of-concept partial
> restore. If you have a RAID controller make sure that it will be happy
> with you swapping disks around like that though...
>
> It's a bit more (a lot more probably) expensive if your server uses
> hotswap SAS disks or something, and if you are restoring the registry
> then restoring to a different (eg cheaper) test platform becomes a bit
> harder but not impossible.
>
> If you are doing incremental backups, be aware that the last-modified
> date on the sql databases doesn't get updated like you'd expect (ask me
> how I found that out :). If you are doing full backups then VSS takes
> care of everything for you.
>
> A few years ago I restored an XP machine using bacula on a BartPE boot
> cd. The director and catalog was on another machine which made that side
> of it easier (no need to restore catalog's etc). The restore process was
> basically just:
> . Build the BartPE CD and put bacula-fd and associated stuff on it
> . Boot of the BartPE CD (this was actually a lot trickier than
> anticipated - the CDROM driver turned out to be mostly stuffed)
> . Set up networking
> . Format and partition the disk and make it bootable
> . Restore all the data
>
> I'm not sure how you'll go restoring the registry 'live' - you may need
> to restore it to another folder and then boot a recovery cd and copy it
> from there or something. I've never done it that way.
>
> Have a read of the ASR restore methodology on Microsoft's various web
> sites to give you a basic understanding of the backup and restore
> process on Windows and what restoring the registry entails.
>
My take on this is to use vmware server and vmware converter. You
install converter and convert your system into vmware server 2.x. You
now have an an image of the whole system. Save it in bacula, or
anywhere else. Then use bacula to do the backups of the database. If
system crashes you run the server in vmware server, restore the
database from bacula, and you are done. Assuming you are ok running
the vmware temporary or permanently.
Lucas
http://lucasmanual.com/mywiki/Bacula
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