Re: bare-metal restoration -- what should I know before I do it?

The project is done and I wanted to share my Lessons Learned in hopes it
might be of use for others. I have no problem with anyone - such as the SBS
MVP's - using my situation as an example of what NOT to do. My firm hope is
that no other SBS admin has to go through what I did.

Background: Ran into a problem with WSUS 3.0 upgrade in early Feb. Couldn't
get into the MSC, but still received the daily reports of that was avaiable
for downlaod, and what PC's had ben updated. Tried everything but couldn't
get to it and slowly made things worse as I tried to use 3rd-party tools to
unistall it so I caould try a reinstall. This, plus other nagging problems,
made me decide to "flatten" the server and rebuild it from tape backup
(Symantec Backup Exec 11d). Started on a Wednesday (the 12th) at 3 PM
thinking I'd be done we;; before midnight. My plan was to reinstall SBS
from CD and follow the Symantec KB paper on restoring the System State and
then Information Store. It turned out to be a many-days nightmare that
ended just 3 days ago.

LESSONS LEARNED
(1) Write down the backup plan; don't just rely on a KB paper. Writing this
down would have helped me mentally examine each step and consequence.
(2) Test the backup plan!! [I realize (1) and (2) are blazing flashes of the
obvious, but still worth repeating.]
(3) Have each user do a backup of their settings and burn to CD/DVD. I
found out the hard way how important the look and feel everyone has with
their computer. I was able to eventualy get this back, but caused a lot of
hard feelings.
(4) Matching users to mailboxes involves forethought. I had new user
accounts and old mailboxes. I learned on-the-fly (through the wonderful
folks on htis NG) how to use exmerge, ADUS and the ESM Mailbox Recovery
Center to do this.
(5) Matching users to their My Documents folders is NOT easy! I still have
problems with one user (the boss, no less). I found that I did NOT have to
restore my E: drive (the one with the user's folders, log files, etc.) as it
was never flattened in the reinstall. So all those folders have the new
accounts and lots of "account unknown's" in them from the "old" domain) that
have caused me lots of pain (internal and from the users) in figuring out
the permissions each SHOULD have. One big problem is that many of these
"account unknowns" can't be deleted - the button is greyed out. One
assumption I'd made is that when I copied the data frm these folders to
their "new" My Documents, that all parent and child files and folders would
inherit those permissions. I was wrong, and I think I'll be spending much
of next week figuring out the cure.
(6) I should never have tried this in the first place. I don't think I
tried enough resources to find solutions to the problems I had. I know that
NOW. I trusted too much in the backup software and KB articles to be "all
I'd need" to do the job. I don't fault them, I fault myself as I failed to
realize every situation is unique.

Once again, my thanks for all the support during this process. I could not
have done it without yoiur help!

Mike Webb
Platte River Whooping Crane maintenance Trust, Inc.
a conservation 501 (c)(3) non-profit org.


"Mike Webb" <Mike_Webb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:O$8kmSdaIHA.6140@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Running SBS 2003 Premium.
======================
I have made many mistakes with this server since we moved from a P2P
workgroup over dial-up (!) to the SBS system 3 years ago. I came in
knowing
a bit (went through the whole MCSE on-site training for WinNT 4.0 in 1999
or
2000), and learned much since then. Unfortunately, the mistakes I made
along the way have left me with a server that has "permanent" yellow and
red
items in the Event Logs, and minor problems with some of the apps. I feel
like I'm chasing my tail and that it might be best to start from scratch.
I
know enough to back up all user and company data, and note all the
configuration info, and backup the certificates.

Searching on this NG, I've seen a few references to bare-metal restores,
with links to MS docs that can help. Even knowing that, I feel compelled
(scared) to ask the readers for their advice on what to keep, what to
"throw
away", etc. for this job. Especially your lessons-learned.

Many thanks in advance!
--
Mike Webb
Platte River Whooping Crane Maintenance Trust, Inc.
a 501 (c)(3) conservation non-profit organization




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