Overview of bare metal recovery
Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) is the process of restoring a protected system directly back onto a newly repaired or replaced hardware system.
Note: You can also perform a bare metal recovery onto virtual systems. In most cases, this virtual approach is the fastest method of recovering a protected system completely from backup.
With bare metal recovery, (as the name implies), there is no need to first load an operating system before beginning the recovery. Using the Recovery Wizard, you can simply write the protected system image directly back to the recovered system.
Prepare for a bare metal restore
We highly recommend that you practice performing a bare metal restore of your customer systems (a) to become familiar with both the recovery process and limitations and (b) to ensure you are prepared in the event of a real disaster.
The following instructions may be used to recover your protected system back onto either a bare metal system or virtual machine using the Axcient x360Recover Recovery Toolkit. (This is a quick overview of the Bare Metal Restore process. For complete documentation of all features of the Recovery Toolkit, refer to the Axcient Recovery Toolkit Guide.)
a. Minimum system requirements
- 2GB RAM
- 1Ghz CPU
- Bootable DVD or USB Support
b. BMR limitations and unsupported configurations
[Click here for details on BMR limitations and unsupported configurations]
The Replibit Recovery Toolkit operates from a Linux environment and there are several unsupported recovery scenarios:
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Perform Bare Metal Recovery in x360Recover
STEP 1. Boot the x360Recover Recovery Toolkit
- Download the Axcient Recovery Toolkit from the Axcient downloads page.
- Burn the ISO to a DVD or create a bootable USB image. (Rufus works well for this.)
- Boot your destination physical or virtual system from the Recovery ISO/USB.
- Click the Start menu and select Recovery Wizard from the Recovery Tools menu
STEP 2. Choose the recovery mode
Choose the desired Recovery Mode.
You may select from three options: (a) recovery from a local appliance or vault, (b) recovery from an exported virtual disk, or (c) recovery using a disk-to-disk Copy Wizard.
The following instructions explain the process required for each type of recovery:
Option (a) - Recover from a local appliance or a local vault
Use this method to recover from a locally-available BDR device
[Click here for details on how to recover from a local appliance or local vault]
1. To perform a recovery directly from a locally-accessible appliance or vault BDR device onto your recovery system, select Recover from Local Appliance or Vault from the Bare Metal Recovery Wizard. Note: You can't use the Bare Metal Recovery Wizard to connect to a remote vault over the internet. The connection for a remote vault must be done on the local LAN. Click the Next button to continue. 2. In the Replibit Server Connection screen, enter the IP address, username and password of the appliance or vault you are connecting to. Click the Next button to continue. 3. In the Protected System Selection screen, select the protected system that should be recovered:
Click Next to continue. 4. In the Snapshot Selection screen, select the snapshot that should be used as the recovery point:
Click the Next button to continue. 5. The Recovery Wizard will now initialize iSCSI services, export the selected recovery point on the appliance or vault, and attach the disk volumes. Verify that the iSCSI operations completed successfully, and that no errors are reported. Click the Next button to continue. 6. In the Drive Mapping screen, select the drive volume(s) you wish to recover:
Click Next to continue. Regardless of the recovery method you have selected, the data recovery process will now begin. You will now monitor the overall job progress from the Recovery Wizard status window. Continue to STEP 3. Disk Recovery Operation in the instructions below for more information on how to proceed. |
Option (b) - Recover from an exported virtual disk
Use this method to recover from an exported disk image available on USB or NAS storage.
You can use this method to recover a protected system from any VHD, VHDX, or VMDK image file. Create an exported virtual disk image by using Export on any snapshot from the protected systems details page.
[Click here for details on how to recover from an exported virtual disk]
1. To perform a recovery from an exported virtual disk image, select Recover from Exported Virtual Disk from the Bare Metal Recover Wizard. Click Next to continue. 2. Attach a USB disk containing the exported virtual disk image you wish to restore to the recovery system. A popup should appear showing that the device has been mounted. 3. Cancel or close the popup and return to the Bare Metal Recovery Wizard. 4. On the Drive Mapping page, click the Browse button and select the Source Virtual Disk. Locate the mounted USB drives at /media/axcient/<label> (where <label> is the volume label name of the mounted drive). Browse to and select the VHD, VHDX or VMDK file you wish to recover from. Click Open to continue. 5. Once you have selected a disk, map it to the appropriate Target Disk. Click Add to save it to the list. Repeat the above steps to map additional virtual disks to local physical disks for recovery, if necessary. Click Next to continue. Map a network share6. If your virtual disk image is located on a network share, you will have to manually mount that share onto the running live CD environment. Click the Start menu and select QTerminal from the System Tools Menu. Elevate the command prompt to the root user by executing: sudo su Mount the Windows share using the following command syntax: mount -t cifs -o username=”<user name>”,domain=”<domain name>” //<Windows Server Name>/<Share Name> /<Mount location> For example: Server name is Server2012 Share name is Files To login as the user Administrator for domain MyDomain and mount it at /mnt use: Mount -t cifs -o username=”Administrator”,domain=”MyDomain” //Server2012/Files /mnt Note: If you have issues connecting by server name, you may use the IP address instead. If you need to mount multiple shares, create folders for each mount point using mkdir mkdir /mnt/Share1 Regardless of the recovery method you have selected, the data recovery process will now begin. You will now monitor the overall job progress from the Recovery Wizard status window. Continue to STEP 3. Disk Recovery Operation in the instructions below for more information on how to proceed. |
Option (c) - Recover using the disk-to-disk Copy Wizard
Use this method to perform a direct copy of one or more drives to another
[Click here for details on how to recover using a desk-to-disk Copy Wizard]
Recover using a disk-to-disk Copy Wizard1. To perform a simple disk-to-disk copy operation for system recovery, troubleshooting or diagnostics, select Disk to Disk Copy Wizard from the Bare Metal Recovery Wizard. Click Next to continue. 2. Select a source disk. 3. Select a target disk. 4. Click Add to add them to the list. Repeat if necessary, to add additional disks to be copied. Click Next to continue. Regardless of the recovery method you have selected, the data recovery process will now begin. You will now monitor the overall job progress from the Recovery Wizard status window. Continue to STEP 3. Disk Recovery Operation in the instructions below for more information on how to proceed. |
STEP 3. Disk recovery operation (Common to all three modes)
Regardless of which recovery method you selected above, the data recovery process will now begin.
Monitor the overall job progress from the Recovery Wizard status window.
- Detailed job information is presented in the main window.
- Job status and estimated time remaining for the current copy phase are shown at the bottom.
Once the recovery process is completed, click the Finish button.
You may Reboot the system immediately; or if you are restoring to a system with dissimilar hardware, please proceed to Dissimilar Hardware Driver Injection instructions below.
STEP 4. Dissimilar hardware driver injection
If you are recovering to a bare metal system, it is likely that the new hardware is substantially different from the original machine.
This means the recovered system will need to have drivers installed for the new devices.
Perform the following steps to inject drivers into the offline system *AFTER* performing the recovery, but *PRIOR* to booting it for the first time from the recovered image:
[Click here for details on how to provide dissimilar hardware driver injection]
1. Mount the volume containing the C: drive of the protected system using Disk Manager. 2. From the Recovery Tools menu, click to launch the Driver Injector. 3. The Replibit BMR Driver Injector screen displays. Note: If you have not mounted a disk volume that contains a valid Windows installation folder, you will receive a warning that the Driver Injector could not locate the offline Windows installation. Configure the target settings:
You can leave all other settings at their default values. Click Next to continue. 4. In the Please wait while we analyze this system... screen, wait for the Driver Injector to read through the provided driver files. It will make matches against the hardware installed within the running system. When the Finished message appears, click the Next button to continue. 5. When the table of discovered devices appears, verify that the driver matches have been located for all critical hardware, such as storage controllers.
Note: No validation is performed on the drivers being selected. Please ensure that you are selecting a valid Windows driver file for the correct operating system and architecture.
6. The previously discovered and manually selected drivers will now be installed. Click Finish when the installation process has completed. |
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IMPORTANT NOTE:
After performing a full system recovery or virtualizing a system in Live Mode, x360Recover (Replibit) will automatically perform a new full backup at the next scheduled time, in order to synchronize the recovered system with the backup image. This full backup will only write changed data, but it is essential to ensure that the backup image remains in sync with the protected system.
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