Additional server protection (apart from backups)

[PaulD_1]

Hi!

Just a simple question that I would really appreciate some advice with. We have a DL380 Windows server and obviuosly perform a full daily backup. Raid1 on local drive provides fault tollerance for hardware but what about operating system protection. Can Hadware Raid be cloned by something like ghost for additional protection (or is there some other method apart from backups/cloning that can be used for recovery for failed OS) - I would need to check this but would cloning need to be performed regularly as computer accounts expire.


Many Thanks in advanced.

[raadek · Accepted solution]

I am not sure what you are exactly after, but you may consider data replication.

If you run Window OS, then a simle-ish way to do that is e.g. by using HP OpenView Storage Mirroring software (http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/sm/index.html)

Rgds

[PaulD_1]

Hi and thanks for coming back to me. The link is dead but I will look into this.

I'm not sure if a full backup is enough and want to safeguard against operating system corruption etc etc. Apart from boot options (such as recovery console etc) I was going to look at cloning the c:\ drive for added protection. Just really having a feel for what other protection is available.

Thanks again!

[raadek]

Brackets killed the link - this one should work:
http://h18006.www1.hp.com/products/storage/software/sm/index.html

[Brian_Murdoch]

Hi Paul,

Some customers buy an extra disk, the same physical size as each member of the O/S mirror set as a spare. At a certain point they will shut down the server and remove one of the mirror set disks and reboot (E.G SCSI ID 1). Once the system has re-booted the spare disk can be inserted and it will rebuild to clone the remaining one.

The earlier removed disk is a snapshot of the system at that time. It's not a substitute for daily backups however if you did lose the complete O/S pair for whatever reason, this single disk could be installed and booted. Incremantal backups would then provide the missing info and you could get the sytem back again from the catastophe.

Don't pull the disks when online and running. HP don't support that unless the disk has failed and is spun down.

Just a thought.

Brian

[Torsten.]

In addition to the post above: Of course you can "ghost" the disk, not only with "ghost".
I would use a bootable CD with a windows environment, because you can use the original windows drivers for the raid - it's easy and fast.
Take a look at "windowspe" and "bartpe".

[chongkan]

Acronis True Imaging is OK

Here is the Acronis User guide: http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImageEnterpriseServer9.1_ug.en.pdf, other downloads an information: http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATIES/ and also some links so you can check its trustability ( hehe, seems like I'm selling something here )



http://www.computing.net/windows2000/wwwboard/forum/63624.html

http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/company/inpress/2004/09-03-fbd-trueimage.html

[PaulD_1]

Thanks guys some great pointers - I shall look into all of these.

[Jaragon]

Hey there's actually some great options supported by HP, one is you can us the smart start CD to break your mirror into 2 raid 0 , store 1 HDD, Expand and migrate the other one and you're done, trash and replace if fail, another great solution would be RDP (rapid deployment pack) it can store the images in another server and deploy them over the network really quick, for RDP info just look under HP.com, again the great thing about this options is they are supported by HP.