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Title
How to perform a Bare Metal Restore for a Windows machine -
Description
This article describes how to perform bare metal recovery for Windows machines using Rapid Recovery.
In Rapid Recovery, Bare Metal Recovery provides the ability to restore an entire system back to the original or to new dissimilar hardware. For example, a physical system can be restored to a virtual or cloud platform, and vice versa. This functionality separates the operating system from a specific platform, providing portability.
Bare Metal Recovery (also called Bare Metal Restore (BMR)) is most often used in disaster recovery scenarios or migration projects. For example, it can be used to deploy new hardware in case of disaster and also facilitate the migration to a public or private cloud.
Note: If an Administrative Task, such as Disk Defragmentation was being run on the Agent to be restored at the time the Recovery Point was created, the Bare Metal Restore will not be successful. -
Resolution
For more information on this topic, please see:
- Rapid Recovery Advanced Administration Course - Web Based Training (WBT)
- Rapid Recovery Administration: Module 7 – Volume and Machine-level Recovery
The process to perform a BMR includes creating a boot CD image, burning the image to disk, booting up the target server from disk, connecting to the recovery console instance, mapping volumes, initiating the recovery, and then monitoring the process. Once the bare metal restore is complete, you can continue with the task of loading the operating system and the software applications on the restored server, followed by your unique settings and configuration.
Follow these steps to perform a BMR (for the latest detailed information and instructions on BMR, refer to the Rapid Recovery User Guide, located on the Tech Docs page).
Prerequisites for Performing a Bare Metal Restore for a Windows Machine, see also User Guide:- Before you can begin the process of performing a bare metal restore for a Windows machine, you must ensure that the following conditions and criteria exist:
- Backups of the server and the functioning Rapid Recovery Core
- Hardware to restore (new or old, similar or dissimilar)
- Disk or storage equal to or greater than the original size of the backed up disk or volume
- NOTE: Restoring to a smaller disk/volume is not supported.
- Blank CD and CD burning software or USB Drive
- VNC viewer (optional)
- Windows 7 PE (32-bit) compatible storage drivers and network adapter drivers for the target machine
- Storage controller, RAID, AHCI, and chipset drivers for the target operating system
- NOTE: The storage controller drivers are only needed if the restore being performed is to dissimilar hardware.
The following steps will guide you in performing a BMR using the newly created Boot CD.
NOTE: A more complete step by step process is detailed in the Rapid Recovery User Guide in the section, "Performing a bare metal restore for Windows machines."
- Create a Boot CD
- Boot the target machine using the BootCD, and obtain its IP address and authentication key.
- Restore the Machine from the core console using the Restore link at the top of the page, allowing you to navigate the wizard, choosing protected agent, specific dated recovery points, selecting the option stating you already have a BootCD, selecting target volumes, and finally starting the restore process. Note that, as stated above, there are more details available regarding the process in the user guide.
- When the restore is completed, reboot the Target Machine.