Re: Disaster Recovery: Planning Ahead
- From: "David Elders" <david_elders@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2005 19:18:32 +0100
Hi Liam,
For what its worth, we had to restore our server today [reasons aren't
important in the context of this thread] - findings:
We had our SBS 2003 Premium box set-up thus:
SBS 2003 Premium w/ SP1
2 x NICs with ISA 2004
3 x 200GB SATA drives
Drive 1 - partioned as 25Gb C [system], 35Gb D [exchange - to cater for
expansion] and 140Gb E [data]
Drive 2 - volume shadow copies and daily backups
Drive 3 - Software Raid 1 mirror of Drive 1
We also have an external USB drive [250Gb] that we use to take regular [at
least weekly] copies of the latest daily backups to, in order to provide
off-site cover...
For reasons I won't go into, mirror wasn't an option in this instance - we
had to opt for restoring from the last backup pre-problems. After a lot of
trying far less 'intrusive' possible fixes, we ended up having to go for
full restore from backup. Procedure we ended up taking is noted below:
1] shut down the server
2] disconnected all but Drive 1
3] booted up from SBS 2003 CD1
4] deleted all partitions on drive - recreated and opted to install Windows
on 1st partition [C]
5] when prompted, named server as it had been previously
6] once Windows had installed, then installed Windows 2003 Service Pack 1
from the SBS 2003 SP1 CD Set
7] once this had installed, used Disk Management to format D and E
partitions - changed CD letter to G
8] shut server down - reconnected Drive 2 [F]
9] rebooted in Directory Services Recovery Mode
10] once booted, opted to restore from backup file on Drive 2 [F] - all
drives but *not* Information Store
11] once the restore had ran, rebooted Server and all came up 100% fine
Timeframes were approximately:
Windows install: About an hour or thereabouts - possibly 1.5 hours [with the
wait at 13mins! :-)]
SP1 install: About 20 mins > half an hour
Full restore from Backup [approx 35Gb in total] - about 25 mins
In total, full restore from scratch [on same system albeit] in max 2.5
hours - only central thing that remains to be redone is the disk mirror but
I'm happy to wait a couple of days in the meantime to ensure things are back
being happy before I junk the straight file copies on the [now broken]
mirror.
The 'just in case' factor is one reason why I would *always* recommend doing
full backups rather than incremental - the more links in the chain, the more
potential places it can all go wrong.
In terms of Gary's note about things not going the way you expect, we didn't
have to do *anything* to restore Exchange on top of the above restore of the
drives. It was already running and working on the reboot [which was nice and
unexpected!]
There's a really good step-by-step on
http://www.smallbizserver.net/Default.aspx?tabid=144 entitled 'How To Backup
And Restore Your Server' which details the procedure in more detail...
I actually wish I had just went straight for the throat [as it would have
saved *loads* of time] but it was a good live example of the importance of
full backups for us.
Cheers,
David
"Liam" <Liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3514B0D0-34C7-4748-ADD6-A7230923CD40@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Thanks Gary,
>
> That is EXACTLY the stuff I am thinking about.
> Old NT 4.0 used to have a disaster recovery disk (ERD).
> What does SBS have?
>
> I found this good link
> http://msmvps.com/bradley/archive/2004/11/15.aspx
>
> So I have implemented the SYSTEM STATE backup every Sunday at 3AM.
> Now I ma looking into the recovery console.
>
> By the way. How do you simulate a disaster while users are on the system?
> Parallel servers?
>
> Thanks for the insight.
>
> Liam
>
> "Gary Karasik" wrote:
>
>> Have you had a disaster-recovery drill where you simulate a disaster and
>> try
>> to recover the system from scratch? There's always something that either
>> doesn't work or that doesn't work as you expect it to.
>>
>> GaryK
>>
>> "Liam" <Liam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>> news:56DB2103-CF9E-4AC8-B3BA-F74B46110BFC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> > Greetings,
>> >
>> > I was just browsing the group and I saw Donal o'Donoghue's post about
>> > the
>> > panicing amateur. It scared me.
>> >
>> > What steps should I take to ensure a quick recovery in the event of a
>> > system
>> > failure/fire/wild dogs/idiots that touch the system/vorpal
>> > bunnies/Wierdna
>> > from Wizardy etc?
>> >
>> > Someone mentioned a recovery disk?
>> > I backup everything daily and full backup every Friday.
>> >
>> > Current Setup
>> > SBS 2003 premium
>> > Exchange
>> > Sharepoint (extensively 30+ GB there)
>> > SQL
>> >
>> > The hardware is dell PowerEdge 2850 RAID-5 3 75 GB disks one spare.
>> >
>> > All advice is very helpful. I figure I better be prepared!
>> >
>> > Liam
>>
>>
>>
.
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