imaging 2003 server

[edie209]

I am going have to image the admin server sometime this week as its drives are too small and we are running out of space very quickly.

 

Now I have Ghost 10 and LiveState Recovery 6 and I was just wondering if anyone has used either with 2003 server and a scsi raid controller the server is a Dell Poweredge 1800.

 

What I'm really looking for is any gothchas, now I know Ghost 10 is not for server OS's but I have read that some people have used it with success has anyone here?

[kestrel1]

Not used Ghost with any success with 2003 server. It was an older version than 10 though. I have used Acronis True Image, but I never needed to restore the image on 2003 server. It does work well with other OS's. There is a server version: http://eu.acronis.com/enterprise/products/choose-trueimage/

[Heebeejeebee]

Did I miss it - it doesn't seem to mention anything about supporting RAID. You can use it to dump an image to but apparently not to make an image of.

 

I'm looking for a solution that will image raid (5+0) so that I can keep a fail safe image off site but have so far drawn a blank.

 

I do like the fact that you can restore to a virtual machine though. It means you could keep one tucked away for emergencies.

 

HBJB

[spc-rocket]

Hi there,

 

You should be able to image the server using Acronis or Symantec BackupExec System Recovery v6. and above. Remember imaging does not have anything to do with raid except that fact that when you restore your system you will need to add in the drivers of any scsi radi card if and only if its different to the scsi cards that were present when the image is taken.

 

So in a DR scenario you would create the raid array from scratch and then use the utilities provided with the relevant software to restore the partitions. Both of the products are good in the sense what when restoring it will allow you to resize the partitions if you wanted to before restoring the data. The Symantec product can also take image of dynamic disks whereas i think the acronis one doesn't - not in v9.1 anyway.

 

Ash.

[Heebeejeebee]

Hmmm....

 

I think the product I last looked at (some time ago before I abandoned my search) required the system to be 'offline' since it imaged it from a dos like state (similar to Ghost 9) and this could not handle RAID arrays.

 

Since they now image whilst the system is live (like Ghost 10) this should no longer be a problem and I should have thought before I leapt in and posted. :oops:

 

HBJB

[edie209]

Well it seems that I don't have the correct software so this Acronis it this the best on the market for the type of situations Im likely to come across? as it looks like I will have to purchase something

[laserblazer]

I used Ghost 11 and it was a doddle. Mind you there's no RAID array but I'm not sure if that would be a problem. I did it to alter the partition sizes as the boot partition was way to small. It took about 2 hours to make the image swap the drives and restore with amended partitions. Ghost 11 cost £17 plus around £9 per machine. We have to buy the licences in blocks of 10.

 

I was told that there is an issue with Acronis and Server 2003.

[SpuffMonkey]

You could have a look at the VMWare Converter - and take a virtualised image of it - I've had mixed results - but a few were successful

[edie209]

I was told that there is an issue with Acronis and Server 2003.

 

Could you elaborate on this or point me to some information, as I was seriously thinking of going this route.

[SYNACK]

I know it may be to late but you do need to be careful when imaging a windows 2003 server. The server components use the hard drive volume id as a security measure and will stop all the server components like active directory if it changes. The newer software like Acronis may circumvent the issue but I know that a while back when I imaged one of my DCs over to new drives it killed AD and I had to wipe AD and Cert services off it then rejoin it to the domain to make it function again.

[laserblazer]

I think it was Dos Box who told me about the problem with Acronis. He certainly told me Symantec Ghost 11 would be ok. Which it was. The new drive has been running for a couple of months now. There has been no issues with AD. Everything is running smoothly to the extent that I plan to ghost the new drive back to the old one so that I can start playing with some of the problem areas I have not been able to address such as DHCP not working. My idea is that if I have an hour or two when the server can go off, I can swap the drives, have a play and then swap them back and get the server on again in a couple of minutes.

[srochford]

Did I miss it - it doesn't seem to mention anything about supporting RAID. You can use it to dump an image to but apparently not to make an image of.

 

I'm looking for a solution that will image raid (5+0) so that I can keep a fail safe image off site but have so far drawn a blank.

 

I do like the fact that you can restore to a virtual machine though. It means you could keep one tucked away for emergencies.

 

HBJB

 

if this is your only DC then it's probably OK to have an image as your backup (but I would worry about a network with just one DC).

 

If this is one of multiple DCs then DO NOT USE AN IMAGE as a backup method - it will end in tears!

 

If it's just a standalone server then it should be fine to keep an image of it as a backup (depending on how often you take it, you might have to leave/rejoin the domain when you restore if the "real" server has changed its password in the meantime)

[zag]

Another reason not to use Raid on servers imo. It sometimes causes more problems than it fixes.

[Osprey]

In some cases it is worth considering adding additional discs, move some of the data across and use dfs to make it appear if it is still one share. Of course, if the system drive is full then...... !