laserblazer Posted November 8, 2009 Posted November 8, 2009 Is there any reason why I shouldn't net boot the Admin server to Symantec Ghost on the curriculum server and make an image? Seems like a simple way to get things up and running again if we had a server failure.
srochford Posted November 8, 2009 Posted November 8, 2009 It depends :-) Is this a domain controller? If so, then don't do it - if you ever need to restore the image you can end up with a complete mess. Even if it's the only DC (and that's a separate worry!), you'll have users and computers who've changed passwords and this will roll them back. If there's more than 1 DC you can get a completely broken active directory. If it's not a DC then there's no real problem with making an image 1
laserblazer Posted November 9, 2009 Author Posted November 9, 2009 It is a DC but there are only around 12 users, so resetting passwords etc., would not be a big deal.
andy_nic Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 @ laserblazer Can you let us know how you get on, because I’ve always wondered how Symantec Ghost handles servers e.g. raid, if your server has a raid Thanks andy
laserblazer Posted November 9, 2009 Author Posted November 9, 2009 @ laserblazer Can you let us know how you get on, because I’ve always wondered how Symantec Ghost handles servers e.g. raid, if your server has a raid Thanks andy It's not RAID andy, I don't think I'd even consider doing it if it was.
plexer Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Why's that then? hardware raid presents a bunch of disks to the system as if it was 1 large disk? You then partition it up in windows? Ben
DMcCoy Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Why's that then? hardware raid presents a bunch of disks to the system as if it was 1 large disk? You then partition it up in windows? Ben You still need a driver to see the RAID card though, newer versions of Ghost use WinPE which can have the driver added more easily, the DOS version have virtually no RAID support. If it is a single DC then there should be no problems using a ghost image for disaster recovery, it is considerably more of a risk in a multi DC environment, it's still a good idea to power down the clients before a restore though.
p858snake Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Why's that then? hardware raid presents a bunch of disks to the system as if it was 1 large disk? You then partition it up in windows? BenOnly if you use that raid number, which personally i wouldn't use a raid 0.
sted Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 You still need a driver to see the RAID card though, newer versions of Ghost use WinPE which can have the driver added more easily, the DOS version have virtually no RAID support. If it is a single DC then there should be no problems using a ghost image for disaster recovery, it is considerably more of a risk in a multi DC environment, it's still a good idea to power down the clients before a restore though. only usually for windows pc/ms dos usually can see the drives quite happily (at least fdisk can as hdds are almost always ntfs nowadays and servers i would hope all are) so ghosting isnt usually a problem. I have ghosted servers before usually its been the only dc and needed a bigger hdd so ghosted one of the raid disks to a bigger drive then put the new bigger drive back in the pc raid it and let the raid software rebuild the array
plexer Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Only if you use that raid number, which personally i wouldn't use a raid 0. I never mentioned any particular flavour of raid and it's not specific to raid 0, any form of raid gives you a large disk which you can then carve up it's the redundancy that's different. Ben
DMcCoy Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 only usually for windows pc/ms dos usually can see the drives quite happily (at least fdisk can as hdds are almost always ntfs nowadays and servers i would hope all are) so ghosting isnt usually a problem. I have ghosted servers before usually its been the only dc and needed a bigger hdd so ghosted one of the raid disks to a bigger drive then put the new bigger drive back in the pc raid it and let the raid software rebuild the array Not if the drives are connected to a proper RAID controller, some of the onboard RAID controllers will show individual SATA disks when accessed without a driver though.
Busybub Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 I've done it a couple of times to quickly recover from a degraded RAID array, including twice on a Dell with PERC RAID card. No problems any time I've done it.
Michael Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 What I would recommend you do (but it's a little late now), is when you first setup the server, install Windows Server, configure the server name and static IP as appropriate then create an image. Technically the server would still be in a Workgroup. In the event of a failure, you'd then restore this base image, then perform a full system restore with system state. This would bring the server back online.
Busybub Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 Not if the drives are connected to a proper RAID controller, some of the onboard RAID controllers will show individual SATA disks when accessed without a driver though. RAID drivers will be copied in the image taken. As long as you ghost back to the same hardware you shouldn't experience any problems. I've tried it with SCSI RAID, SATA RAID, built-in RAID (IDE and SATA), never had a problem...
Michael Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 RAID drivers will be copied in the image taken. As long as you ghost back to the same hardware you shouldn't experience any problems. In theory you still need RAID drivers if booting to a pre-Windows environment, otherwise your imaging software wouldn't see the array. I do this a lot with Bart PE by adding RAID and NIC drivers periodically as and when I come across hardware which it won't see.
Busybub Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 In theory you still need RAID drivers if booting to a pre-Windows environment, otherwise your imaging software wouldn't see the array. If the array is degraded you only need to reformat. As long as the hardware remains the same, no problem with chucking a ghost image back on... I have crappy servers, have done it many times
sted Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 In theory you still need RAID drivers if booting to a pre-Windows environment, otherwise your imaging software wouldn't see the array. I do this a lot with Bart PE by adding RAID and NIC drivers periodically as and when I come across hardware which it won't see. thats cos barts pe is still windows. Ive used promise controllers and i think even the controllers ih hp servers work quite happily in dos mode so by extension in ghost. Granted its all been ide/sata rather than scsi but ive never had a problem ghosting from raid controllers other than it can be very slow and quicker to shove the drive in a desktop pc rather than a server
Michael Posted November 9, 2009 Posted November 9, 2009 ive never had a problem ghosting from raid controllers other than it can be very slow This is why I'd rather use Bart PE. It's really simple to update its driver database and it works as fast (if not faster) than in Windows itself as nothing else is running. Just fast data transfer.
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