How To: create a Rapid Recovery Boot CD (4035439)

This article serves as a how-to guide on creating a boot CD for use with recovering a server.

Rapid Recovery provides the ability to perform a bare metal restore (BMR) for your Windows or Linux machines whether the hardware is similar or dissimilar. This process begins with creating a boot CD image that you can use to boot up the target server.

1. Open the Rapid Recovery Core Console 
2. Select the More option and Boot CDs.
3. Click Create Boot ISO.
4. In the Boot CD Builder Options dialog box, enter the Output Path where the bootable ISO will be stored.  Make sure the file is saved as an “.iso” extension.
5. In the Connection area, specify to use a static IP address or DHCP network settings for the Universal Recovery Console (URC).  This determines the IP address that will temporarily be assigned to the URC during the restore so the Core machine can communicate with the machine data is being restored to.
6. In the Ultra VNCarea, enter the VNC options.
7. VNC can be loaded into the boot CD so remote access to the machine can be obtained using a VNC Viewer.
8. In the Drivers section of the boot CD Builder Options dialog box the drivers that will be added to the Boot CD must be in .zip format.  If a driver that a vendor provides is in .exe format it can be possible to rename the file from a .exe to a .zip and the renamed file can be read by Boot CD creation processes.  Typical driver requirements for a dissimilar restore are Disk controller and Network interface card drivers for the hardware you are restoring to.
9. Download drivers from the manufacturer’s website and unpack them. The drivers must be WinPE compatible.
10. Use Win Zip to compress the folder that contains the drivers into a .ZIP format
11. In the drivers section, click browse and navigate to the zip file that was created for the drivers, then choose upload.
12. Verify the correct drivers were loaded into the drivers section and select them.
13. Click Create Boot CD.
14. To view the progress of the ISO creation, click the Open Monitor Window button, or go to the Events tab and look at Tasks.
15. When the ISO is complete, go to the ISO output path specified in Step 4.
16. You can also view created ISOs from the Console (Core –> More –> Boot CDs).
17. Burn the ISO image to a blank CD.
18. If restoring to a VM, boot directly from the ISO file.