Hi,
15.02.2010 13:47, Chris Knipe wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I am successfully backing up a rather large deployment of Linux as well
> as Windows (2003 / 2008) systems. All the Windows machines are being
> backed up using VSS, and everything is running good.
Good start :-)
> From what I can see under the backups, VSS is successfully being used,
> backing up files (open or closed), MSDE, IIS, and various other things -
> just like I would like to expect. Please correct me if this is
> incorrect and I am missing the point...
>
> <SNIP
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "System
> Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:45 wa-cpt-bacula01-sd JobId 60: Job write elapsed time =
> 00:04:28, Transfer rate = 2.123 K bytes/second
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "Registry
> Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "Event Log
> Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete):
> "MSDEWriter", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "COM+ REGDB
> Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "BITS
> Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "WMI
> Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
> 15-Feb 14:46 win24-fd JobId 60: VSS Writer (BackupComplete): "IIS
> Metabase Writer", State: 0x1 (VSS_WS_STABLE)
That, indeed, looks good.
...
> What I would like to know however, is how to restore these VSS
> snapshots? For example, how can I instruct bacula to restore IIS and
> MSDE, or only the Event Log which was backed up through VSS, but not
> restore any physical files and/or the entire system?
The key thing is to know which files to restore... which I don't in
detail, not really being a windows person.
However, I'm pretty sure that, at least for desaster recovery
purposes, backing up NOT to a running windows instance, you should
have everything you need.
For such a full backup, you need some secondary windows installation
for the resore itself - for Server 2003 and XP, BartPE is a convenient
way to get such a thing. For newer Windows versions, you probably best
use Microsoft's PE system (I haven't actually built such a beast yet).
> Am I understanding this correct, doing something incorrectly, missing
> out somewhere?
I would expect problems when, for whatever reasons, you need to
restore for example IIS (meta)data only, as I'm pretty sure that doing
this in a running windows will not result in a merge of the data in
the live system and the restored data, but only in an error (more
likely) or loss of the current data by overwriting with backed up
files (less likely).
The good thing is, however, that all those data sets - as far as I can
tell - are most relevant in disaster recovery situations, and
Microsoft itself has ways to store data from the affected systems for
later review, where applicable (event log and WMI data, for example).
My approach here is simply to not care for those data sets for
single-file restores, as I would need to dig too deeply into where
Windows keeps which data, and what you need to get a consistent
restore. Instead, I consider all those VSS generated subsystem data
sets just the base for an eventual bare-metal restore of the whole system.
> Thank you kindly for your time and responces.
I just hope my comments are useful for you :-)
Cheers,
Arno
>
>
> --
>
> Regards,
> Chris Knipe
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace,
> Predictive Self Healing and Award Winning ZFS. Get Solaris 10 NOW
> http://p.sf.net/sfu/solaris-dev2dev
>
>
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--
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SOLARIS 10 is the OS for Data Centers - provides features such as DTrace,
Predictive Self Healing and Award Winning ZFS. Get Solaris 10 NOW
http://p.sf.net/sfu/solaris-dev2dev
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