Creating Image of hard disk on win2008 r2

Laviski

Looking for cheap ghost solution for running win 2008r2 server that will create image to .iso as backup in event of hard drive failure.

open to ideas to complete this that does not require to shut down the server.

thanks,

Standard Toaster

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

Uses Windows VSS so online images.
You can run as a standalone exe and it's scriptable too.
Then maybe mkisofs to create the ISOs, again scripted.

Standard Toaster

Something else you mind find useful:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

Laviski

thanks for the reply.
Still a novice in terms of server administration. but recently had a hard disk failed and use want an image of the primary drive. This should help me on my way.

Thanks again!

Ctrl Alt Del

Laviski wrote: »

thanks for the reply.
Still a novice in terms of server administration. but recently had a hard disk failed and use want an image of the primary drive. This should help me on my way.

Thanks again!

Hi,
Sorry for a late maybe message here...

For data protection only ,use backup to tape/cloud/disk and/or an hybrid combination of them.
Also,one step ahead is a real-time replication / synchronization software from main disk(s) on to a NAS or disk based solution.
Don't ignore Windows built-in VSS that i normal schedule to run on working days,every 2-3 hours from 8AM to 8PM only.

For Application based backup,use the built-in application backup (hourly or daily) and then offload it to above backups.

For OS,i recommend cloning maybe original installation and then rely on RAID 1 or 5 or a combination (but not RAID0).

I highly advise you to build a cheapie desktop PC,install same version of Windows OS server and configure it as "backup" DC (Domain Controller). That will take care of the AD,DNS, DHCP and you can throw a cheap single hard drive and enable replication main server-to-second server every hour.Then,in event of main server failure,you can run a script / command that does mapping the names in DNS and your users may get access to the replicated data only over the past up to one hour !

Be very aware of the OS backup as you want ... as the Windows Active Directory is writing copies and updates (passwords,accounts and other related information) on a daily basis.Creating a disk based OS backup today AND restoring it in over 30 days it will create major issues from server,AD,DNS, DHCP,trusts,workstations ,passwords and so on...more hassle than you need !

Have fun...

Laviski

thanks for the information much appreciated!

the server i have is just used as a webserver and providing game servers
at the moment i made a clone the OS, also doing daily backups of the webserver mysql and the game server config files (basically everything i believe that changes on a daily basis) There are no changes to the dns or active directory to worry about thankfully.

Will review in the next month to know for sure if a drive fail's the data can be restored quickly and painfree. My mistake was not setting up a RAID 5, guess live and learn.

Ctrl Alt Del

Laviski wrote: »

thanks for the information much appreciated!

the server i have is just used as a webserver and providing game servers
at the moment i made a clone the OS, also doing daily backups of the webserver mysql and the game server config files (basically everything i believe that changes on a daily basis) There are no changes to the dns or active directory to worry about thankfully.

Will review in the next month to know for sure if a drive fail's the data can be restored quickly and painfree. My mistake was not setting up a RAID 5, guess live and learn.

Thanks.

Well, that is easy enough !
Also, don't bother with RAID 5 for this setup.
Go for RAID1 at hardware level (if software not an option) and buy 2(two) identical PCIx RAID cards. Later, when one dies, you just gonna swap it with other and keep same functionality !

Have fun...

PlanIT Computing

Check out disk2vhd - available for free, from Microsoft and you can test the VHD in hyper-v.