Using CA ARCserve D2D › Perform Bare Metal Recovery

Perform Bare Metal Recovery

Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) is the process of restoring a computer system from "bare metal" including reinstalling the operating system and software applications, and then restoring the data and settings. The BMR process lets you restore a full computer with minimal effort, even to different hardware. BMR is possible because during the block-level backup process, CA ARCserve D2D not only captures the data, but also all information that is related to:

• Operating system
• Installed applications
• Configuration settings
• Necessary drivers

All relevant information that is necessary to perform a complete rebuild of the computer system from "bare metal" is backed up into a series of blocks and stored on the backup location.

Before you can perform BMR, you must have:

• One of the following things:
  • A created BMR ISO image burned onto a CD/DVD
  • A created BMR ISO image burned onto a portable USB stick

  Note: CA ARCserve D2D utilizes a Boot Kit Utility to combine a WinPE image and CA ARCserve D2D image to create a BMR ISO image. This ISO image is then burned onto a bootable media. You can then use either of these bootable media (CD/DVD or USB stick) to initialize the new computer system and allow the bare metal recovery process to begin. To ensure your saved image is always the most up-to-date version, it is good practice to create a new ISO image every time you update CA ARCserve D2D.

• At least one full backup available.
• At least 1-GB RAM installed on the virtual machine and the source server that you are recovering.
• To recover VMware virtual machines to VMware virtual machines that are configured to behave as physical servers, verify the VMware Tools application is installed on the destination virtual machine.

Dynamic disks are restored at the disk level only. If your data is backed up to a local volume on a dynamic disk, you cannot to restore this dynamic disk during BMR. In this scenario, to restore during BMR you must perform one of the following tasks and then perform BMR from the copied Recovery Point:

• Back up to a volume on another drive.
• Back up to a remote share.
• Copy a recovery point to another location.

Note: If you perform BMR with multiple dynamic disks, the BMR may fail because of some unexpected errors (such as fail to boot, unrecognized dynamic volumes, and so on). If this occurs, you should restore only the system disk using BMR, and then after the machine reboot you can restore the other dynamic volumes on a normal environment.

Regardless of which method you used to create the Boot Kit image, the BMR process is basically the same.

Note: The BMR process cannot create storage spaces. If the source machine had storage spaces, during BMR you cannot create storage spaces at the destination machine. You can either restore those volumes to regular disks/volumes or manually create storage spaces before performing the BMR, and then restore the data into those created storage spaces.

To restore data using bare metal recovery:

1. Insert the saved Boot Kit image media and boot the computer.
   • If you are using a BMR ISO image burned onto a CD/DVD, insert the saved CD/DVD.
   • If you are using a BMR ISO image burned onto a USB stick, insert the saved USB stick.

   The BIOS Setup Utility screen is displayed.

2. From the BIOS Setup Utility screen, select the CD-ROM Drive option or the USB option to launch the boot process. Select an architecture (x86/x64) and press Enter to continue.

   

3. The CA ARCserve D2D language select screen is displayed. Select a language and press "Next" to continue.

   

   The Bare Metal Recovery process is initiated and the initial BMR wizard screen is displayed.

   

4. From the BMR wizard screen, select the type of BMR you want to perform:
   • Recover data backed up using CA ARCserve D2D

     Lets you recover data that was backed up using CA ARCserve D2D. This option is used in connection with backup sessions performed with CA ARCserve D2D or with the CA ARCserve Central Host-Based VM Backup application.

     If you select this option, continue this procedure from here.

   • Recover using a Hyper-V Virtual Standby VM

     Lets you recover data for a machine for which virtual conversion is performed to a Hyper-V virtual machine. This option is used in connection with the CA ARCserve Central Virtual Standby application.

     Note: For this option, you can only recover data if the virtual conversion to a VHD file (for Hyper-V) was performed using CA ARCserve Central Virtual Standby.

     If you select this option, see Recover using a Hyper-V Virtual Standby VM to continue this procedure.

   • Recover using a VMware Virtual Standby VM

     Lets you recover data for a machine for which virtual conversion is done to a VMware virtual machine.  This option is used in connection with the CA ARCserve Central Virtual Standby application.

     Note: For this option, you can only recover data if the virtual conversion to a VMDK file (for VMware) was performed using CA ARCserve Central Virtual Standby.

     If you select this option, see Recover using a VMware Virtual Standby VM to continue this procedure.

5. Click Next.

   The Select a Recovery Point wizard screen is displayed.

   

6. From the Select a Recovery Point wizard screen, select the machine (or volume) which contains recovery points for your backup image.

   CA ARCserve D2D lets you recover from any local drive or from a network share.

   • If you recover from a local backup, the BMR wizard automatically detects and displays all volumes containing recovery points.
   • If you recover from a remote share, browse to the remote location where the recovery points are stored. If there are multiple machines containing recovery points, all machines are displayed.

     You may also need access information (User Name and Password) for the remote machine.

     Note: The network must be up and running to browse to remote recovery points. If necessary, you can check/refresh your network configuration information or you can load any missing drivers from the Utilities menu.

7. If the BMR module cannot detect any local destination volume, the "Select a Folder" dialog automatically displays. Provide the remote share where the backups are residing.

   

8. Select the folder where the recovery points for your backup are stored and click OK. (You can click the arrow icon to validate the connection to the selected location).

   The BMR wizard screen now displays the following information:

   • Machine name (in the upper left pane).
   • Related backup information (in the upper right pane).
   • All the corresponding recovery points (in the lower left pane).

   Note: For supported operating systems, you can perform a BMR from a backup performed on a UEFI machine to a BIOS-compatible machine and from a BIOS machine to a UEFI-compatible machine. See Operating Systems that Support UEFI/BIOS Conversion for a complete listing of firmware conversion supported systems.

   • For operating systems that do not support firmware conversion, to perform BMR for a UEFI system, you must boot the computer in UEFI mode. BMR does not support restoring a computer with different firmware. To verify that the boot firmware is UEFI and not BIOS, click Utilities, About.
   • For operating systems that do support firmware conversion, after you select a recovery point, if it is detected that the source machine is not the same firmware as your system, you will be asked if you want to convert UEFI to a BIOS-compatible system or BIOS to UEFI-compatible system.

     

9. Select which recovery point to restore.

   The related information for the selected recovery point is displayed (in the lower right pane). This display includes such information as the type of backup that was performed (and saved), the backup destination, and the volumes that were backed up.

   If the recovery point contains encrypted sessions (the recovery point clock icon includes a lock), a password required screen appears. Enter the session password and click OK.

   

   Note: If your machine is a Domain Controller, CA ARCserve D2D supports a nonauthoritative restore of the active directory (AD) database file during BMR. (CA ARCserve D2D does not support restoring MSCS clusters).

10. Verify the recovery point that you want to restore and click Next.

    A BMR wizard screen is displayed with the available recovery mode options.

    

11. Select the recovery mode.

    The available options are Advanced Mode and Express Mode.

    • Select Advanced Mode if you want to customize the recovery process.
    • Select Express Mode if you want minimal interaction during the recovery process.

    Default: Express Mode.

    Note: The remainder of this procedure is applicable only if you selected the Advanced Mode and the procedure provides information to guide you through the BMR process.

12. Click Next.

    The BMR utility starts locating the machine that is going to be recovered and displays the corresponding disk partition information.

    The upper pane shows the disk configuration that you have on the current (target) machine and the lower pane shows the disk partition information that you had on the original (source) machine.

    Important! A red X icon displaying for a source volume in the lower pane indicates that this volume contains system information and has not been assigned (mapped) to the target volume. This system information volume from the source disk must be assigned to the target disk and restored during BMR or the reboot fails.

    Note: If you perform BMR and you restore the system volume to a disk which is not configured as the boot disk, it will fail to boot the machine after BMR is completed. Ensure that you are restoring the system volume to a properly configured boot disk.

    Note: When restoring to another disk/volume, the capacity of new disk/volume must be the same size or larger than original disk/volume. In addition, disk resizing is for basic disks only, and not for dynamic disks.

    

13. If the current disk information you are seeing does not appear correct, you can access the Utilities menu and check for missing drivers.
14. If necessary, on the target disk/volume pane you can click the Operations drop-down menu to display the available options. For more information about these options, see Managing the BMR Operations Menu.
15. Click on each target volume and from the pop-up menu, select the Map Volume From option to assign a source volume to this target volume.

    The Select a Basic Source Volume dialog opens.

    

16. From Select a Basic Source Volume dialog, click the drop-down menu and select the available source volume to assign to the selected target volume. Click OK.
    • On the target volume, a checkmark icon is displayed, indicating that this target volume has been mapped to.
    • On the source volume, the red X icon changes to a green icon, indicating that this source volume has been assigned to a target volume.
17. When you are sure all volumes that you want to restore and all volumes containing system information are assigned to a target volume, click Next.

    The Submit Disk Changes screen opens, displaying a summary of the selected operations. For each new volume being created, the corresponding information is displayed.

    

18. When you have verified the summary information is correct, click Submit. (If the information is not correct, click Cancel).

    Note: All operations to the hard drive do not take effect until you submit it.

    On the target machine, the new volumes are created and mapped to the corresponding source machine.

19. When the changes are completed, click OK.

    The Summary of Restore Settings screen opens, displaying a summary of the volumes that are going to be restored.

    Note: On the bottom of restore summary window, the drive letters listed in "Destination Volume" column are automatically generated from the Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE). They can be different from the drive letters listed in "Source Volume" column. However, the data is still restored to proper volume even if drive letters are different.

    

20. After you have verified that the summary information is correct, click OK.

    The restore process starts. The BMR wizard screen displays the restore status for each volume.

    • Depending upon the size of the volume being restored, this operation can take some time.
    • During this process you are restoring, block-by-block whatever you had backed up for that recovery point and creating a replica of the source machine on the target machine.
    • By default, the option to reboot your system automatically after recovery is selected. If necessary, you can clear this option and you can reboot manually at a later time.
    • If necessary, you can cancel or abort the operation at any time.

      

21. From the Utilities menu, you can access the BMR Activity Log and you can use the Save option to save the Activity Log.

    By default, the Activity Log is saved to the following location:

    X:\windows\system32\dr\log.

    Note: To avoid getting a Windows-generated error, do not save the Activity Log on your desktop or create a folder on your desktop using the "Save As" option from the BMR Activity Log window.

22. If you are restoring to dissimilar hardware (the SCSI/FC adapter which used to connect hard drives could have been changed) and no compatible driver is detected in your original system, a "driver injection" page is displayed to allow you to provide drivers for these devices.

    You can browse and select drivers to inject to the recovered system so that even if you are recovering to a machine with dissimilar hardware, you can still bring back the machine after BMR.

23. When the BMR process is completed, a confirmation notification is displayed.

Notes: After completion of BMR:

• The first backup that is performed is a Verify Backup.
• Verify that the BIOS is configured to boot from the disk on which the boot volume was restored to.
• When the machine has been rebooted, you may need to configure the network adapters manually if you restored to dissimilar hardware.
• When the machine is rebooting, a Windows Error Recovery screen may be displayed indicating that Windows did not shut down successfully. If this occurs, you can safely ignore this warning and continue to start Windows normally.
• For dynamic disks, if the status of the disk is offline, you can manually change it to online from the disk management UI (accessed by running the Diskmgmt.msc control utility).
• For dynamic disks, if the dynamic volumes are in a failed redundancy status, you can manually resynchronize the volumes from the disk management UI (accessed by running the Diskmgmt.msc control utility).