NetVault Bare Metal Recovery 11.1 - User Guide for Plug-ins

Finalizing and submitting the job for a backup with Plug-in Live Client for Windows using Windows Server 2008

The final steps include setting additional options on the Schedule, Target Storage, and Advanced Options pages, submitting the job, and monitoring the progress through the Job Status and View Logs pages. These pages and options are common to all NetVault Backup Plug-ins. For more information, see the Dell NetVault Backup Administrator’s Guide.

TIP: To run a job that you have already created and saved, select Manage Job Definitions in the Navigation pane, select the applicable job, and click Run Now.

NOTE: Be aware of the following: • Attempts to perform a Plug-in Live Client backup of a system whose hard disk is full or nearly full, may fail. The plug-in requires a portion of the local system’s hard disk to synchronize data. If enough free space is not available for this synchronization of data, the backup fails. • On Windows Server 2008 clients and later, you cannot take two backup snapshots at the same time, for example, if you initiate simultaneous backups on two clients from the same server. Shadow copy creation is serialized. This issue is a known limitation of Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). • The Master Boot Record (MBR) and the Partition Table items are backed up automatically when a partition (all or individual) is backed up with this plug-in. • Plug-in Live Client does not support DR backups spanning multiple libraries. Attempting to restore a backup job that spans multiple libraries fails.

Booting a NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client with Plug-in Offline Client

When performing backups using the Plug-in Live Client, a target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client can be active and currently in use by a user, that is, online. However, various operations associated with the Plug-in Live Client require that the target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client is taken offline and made accessible to the NetVault Backup Server. This process includes the following operations:

To bring a target DR system to this offline state, the Plug-in Offline Client is used to load a minimal OS to a target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client’s memory. The Plug-in Offline Client boot process entails the configuration of network equipment installed on the target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client; that is, loading driver software for the system’s NIC/SCSI card to memory to use the device and access the system. This boot process varies based on the version of Plug-in Offline Client in use:

Booting with Plug-in Offline Client

This process entails the configuration of network equipment installed on the target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client; that is, loading driver software for the system’s NIC/SCSI card to memory to use the device and access the system.

IMPORTANT: Before starting this procedure, verify the boot order of the target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client. The machine’s CD-ROM drive must be the first source of a boot for this process to work.

Gathering NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client network information

In this first phase, you gather specific network-related information from the NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client for use in the boot process, for example, NIC and SCSI interface values. This requirement includes the following values:

IMPORTANT: If the target NetVault Bare Metal Recovery Client is configured with multiple NIC/SCSI devices for access, Dell recommends that you gather the preceding information for each device. The Plug-in Offline Client boot process recognizes all these devices and requests that you configure each, individually, with this information, but only one of the devices actually needs to be configured successfully for use.

To obtain all these network values, perform the following steps.