Dell EMC Avamar for Windows Servers 19.7 User Guide

Bare metal recovery backups

A backup for bare metal recovery (BMR) includes the system state and critical disks. BMR enables you to restore a server without having to rebuild the operating system, and to perform the restore offline. Use the Windows VSS plug-in to back up the system state and critical disks for BMR. For information about BMR support for various versions of Windows, see the E-LAB Navigator at https://elabnavigator.dell.com/eln/elnhome.

To prepare for a full disaster recovery of a computer, perform regular backups of all file system data, noncritical disks, and application data.

Maintain a database or spreadsheet of computer names, FQDNs, and IP addresses for each Windows client computer that Avamar backs up. The client information is an important reference in any environment.

If any volume of a dynamic disk pack is critical, then all volumes in the dynamic disk pack become critical. To avoid unnecessarily large System State backups, exclude noncritical dynamic disks by using the --exclude-non-critical-dynamic-disks=true option during the backup.

The Windows VSS plug-in does not back up critical disks on shared storage in a cluster. If a shared volume is a critical disk, then use the Windows File System plug-in for the backup.

When a Windows Server role uses SQL Server instances instead of the Windows Internal Database (WID), use the Avamar Plug-in for SQL Server to back up the SQL Server instances for disaster recovery. The Avamar for SQL Server User Guide explains how to back up the SQL Server instances.