Disk Imaging for bare metal restore question

[Oakie]

I have set up a Windows 2000 advanced server domain controller in small school. There is only one physical machine, a Dell Poweredge T300. It is new. It's using Dell SAS hardware RAID 1 split into 3 partitions. A utiltity partition, operating system partititon and a data partition.

 

 

The machine is used for logins and as a file server for a small lab with 24 student machines with XP pro.

 

I installed a VWware server on it, and then an ubuntu server on that, and then Dans Guardian on that for content filtering.

 

The whole thing has been running nicely since august.

 

I have the data files on the data partition automatically backed up to a usb drive nightly.

 

I want to image the entire disk or at least the operating system partition in case I need to do a bare metal type restore.

 

What do i use to image the machine with Windows, VMware and Ubuntu all rolled into one partition?

 

Since server edition imaging solutions are pricey and since this is a private school struggling during a tough recession, I need an affordable and of course reliable imaging solution.

 

I am a one day a week, part time tech for this school, so ideally I want a solution that will minimize my administration overhead.

 

I'm a bit worried about how I would test a restoral. If the test restoral fails how do I recover?

I can wait until a holiday when I have more time to get things working and documented.

[plexer]

R1Soft CDP does network bootable bare metal restore. Ver 3 out towards end of year is looking good. Ben.

[Oakie]

I found a quick and inexpensive solution that worked perfectly for my needs.

I used terabyte's image for windows program. I installed it on the win2003 DC and then imaged the whole drive.

 

As bad luck would have it, not long afterwards the drive crashed and the machine was no longer bootable. The drive was a 160GB SATA Western Digital and it was only a 2008 model. I think maybe the stress and heat of imaging it took it to it's grave.

 

Image for windows comes with bootable dos rescue disk but that turned out to be a complete waste of time as it would not recognize my usb keyboard, mouse or usb external.

I thought I was in big trouble.

 

However there was also an "image for LINUX" bootable disk that could be made. So i burned a disk and booted up to it.

The interface is crude and clumsy, standard linux style. But it recognized all my hardware and I began the restore. 20 minutes later everything was back to new.

The DC worked, the VMserver started up and the ubuntu server on it worked perfectly.

 

I find it incredible that a program under 40 bucks can image servers considering the typical cost for the major brands is significantly more. I'm pleased.

 

 

A quick test with the program's scheduler worked fine, but a differential failed to be configured. I have to go back and see if I can get that to work. (not so pleased).

 

This experiment was done on a cheapie lab test configuration server, I plan to try this on a win2k advanced server DC with hardware raid 1 and win2003 DC also with hardware raid 1. The win2k server also has VM server on it with linux and dans guardian.

 

(disclaimer: I do not work for or get any ad money from this company)

Edited December 3, 2009 by Oakie

[pete]

Y'know imagex is available from WinPE2.0 right? Anyone with an XP (or better) licence can legally use it: Windows PE Walkthroughs

 

There's gimagex is you'd prefer a GUI - just add it to the boot.wim: ImageX GUI (GImageX)

 

You can do a bare metal restore using a bootable winpe2.0 cd or usb drive.

[Oakie]

The main thing is I want an imaging solution that can be installed, scheduled, can use differentials, supports RAID, has a bootable restore disk and can do some measure of adaptive restore to different hardware in case it becomes necessary. All that plus affordability are key.

 

I have used BartPE and Ghost for years and it remains one of my favorite tools. But keeping up with chipset drivers, cpu drivers, mass storage drivers, network drivers etc has worn me down.

 

I tire quickly of slipstreaming / integrating drivers, fussing with the errors burning half a dozen disks just to get one that works with the machine at hand.

 

Lately I like to use linux based disks because they often seem to have excellent out of the box support for a wide variety of drivers.

 

I have never tried driveXML though I will eventually get around to it, as I seem to try every imaging software at least once.