Windows 2008 + 2008R2 - Disaster recovery

There's a Technical Note for Networker on this topic in powerlink, search for P/N 300-010-339.  There's also a Tech Advisory on this as well, but powerlink is being difficult and I can't paste the link...

Essentially, windows 2008 only allows the restoration of the system state to same computer it came from.  In a bare metal-type recovery situation, the first step usually is to install a fresh copy of Windows, so restoring the system state becomes a real problem, i.e. Windows won't let you.  Since this is a Windows based limitation, all vendors are affected.  FWIW, it's my understanding that Homebase will be supporting Win2008 this quarter or early next...(?)...so that would be an option.

HTH

--brerrabbit

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, HomeBase could be a way to go, but it's a quite big step to implement a new infrastructure component.

One thing that I heard, was that the new networker client would implement "integrated backup & recovery" functionality.

What that function contains, I don't know. It might not even refferre to "bare metal" recovery of Windows. It might even reffere to the

"bitlocker" hidden bootstrap partition in win2008R2...

What would be greate is if NetWorker could be a target of WSB instead of a VDI file. ( or hopefully better a new SYSTEM save set.)

So basically, what's down the road. Does MS even provide a API ?

best regards

Håkan

I think that what you heard about "integrated" Networker may have referred to the integrated Homebase or Avamar agent that's been in Networker since 7.4.x.  I agree that the Homebase option is non-trivial, but right now the options for bare-metal Win 2008 recovery are limited to a) WSB or b) server imaging unless you purchase a dedicated bare metal product.

I haven't heard anything about improved recovery for 2008....given that the R2 release of 2008 broke a BUNCH of backup products (NW, NBU, Avamar etc) when they changed the VSS components, I don't hold out much hope.  And even my acquaintences that are rabidly pro-Microsoft don't like the builtin backup tools at all.

--brerrabbit

Thanks for posting the documentation, it's nice to have this in one spot.  I still contend though, that this is not a workaround that can be implemented on any sort of Enterprise scale.  Consider that if you have 100 servers at a site running Windows 2008:

     a) you're going to have to provision storage, either local disk or network-accessible disk, to store all 100 servers' daily WSB image backups of the critical drives.  Since the -allCritical option stores the entire volume of each critical volume, this is a non-trivial amount of storage.

     b) you're going to have to have enough slack time in your backup window to capture all of those images (of all of those critical volumes)

     c) you're going to have to have enough media and index space to store those images

     d) after you back up each image, you'll the back up most of the same data when the regular client runs.  You can't skip this, because you won't be able to do file-level recovery other wise.

I'm backing up over 350 servers a night, thankfully most of them are not windows 2008 and many that are are VM's.  There is no way that I could meet my OLA's if I had to image each server's critical drives each night.  Even if you don't image every night it is still a logistical nightmare.  I cannot grasp what the reasoning was behind this decision, whatever value (which also escapes me) there was from implementing this security feature is swamped by the functionality removed.

Sorry for the rant, this is just one of the most bone-headed decisions I've encountered in a long time.  Maybe it's the same crew that handled the whole Sidekick/Danger debacle...

Rant over ! 

Hi Michel,

Excellent answer, sums it all up.

My only comment is that it's quite some turn by MS, not preparing 3rd parties or even the DPM team in advance. It feels like someone got their fingers burnt over in redmont, and just pulled the support in october.

I hear good rumours from testings of the "beta" 7.5.2 client, it's successful from what I hear.

Thanks again,

Håkan

The way that I read the Release Notes, now Windows 2008 R2 is now supported as a regular backup client and has the same recovery options and constraints that Windows 2008 R1 (?) has, i.e. if you're doing a DR recovery of a server to different hardware, you're going to need to utilize the WSB software to first create a DR image (that is, before the system is hosed) and then restore it as part of the full system recovery.

Have to admit I haven't tested that yet, we're in the midst of our pre-upgrade testing for 7.5sp2

HTH

--brerrabbit

Hi again,

Just curious, is there any new statement regarding what is supported and not, now when NetWorker 7.5.2 is GA ?

Is the support basically the same now as it was with older windows versions?

BTW, we have successfully done DR test of windows2008R2, using online SYSTEM STATE recovery.

regards

Håkan Engman

Hi.

Is there anything new to know about how EMC is going to mitigate the Server 2008 DR problem with NetWorker? I've learned that Avamar is already supporting DR restore of Server 2008 in version 5, how about Networker?

And what will the method be?

I must say, it's kind of frustrating that Avamar is supporting the DR restore before NetWorker does, and Avamar is also supporting vStorage API before NetWorker. Is EMC putting so much more empasis on Avamar than NetWorker?

Johannes