Using Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) › How to Perform a Bare Metal Recovery Using a Virtual Standby VM or Instant VM › Review the BMR Prerequisites and Considerations

Review the BMR Prerequisites and Considerations

Verify that the following prerequisites exist before performing a BMR:

• You must have one of the following images:
  • A created BMR ISO image burned onto a CD/DVD
  • A created BMR ISO image burned onto a portable USB stick

  Note: Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) utilizes a Boot Kit Utility to combine a WinPE image and Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows) 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, create a new ISO image every time you update Arcserve UDP Agent (Windows).

• 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.
• Review the Compatibility Matrix which provides the supported operating systems, databases, and browsers.

Review the following restore considerations:

• 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.

• 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.

• If you attempt to perform a BMR on a Hyper-V VM with a 4 KB disk, add this 4 KB disk to the SCSI controller. If you add it to the IDE controller, the disk will not be detected in the Windows PE system.
• (Optional) Review the BMR Reference Information. For more information, see the following topics:
  • How Bare Metal Recovery Works
  • Operating Systems that Support UEFI/BIOS Conversion
  • Managing the BMR Operations Menu

Review the following considerations:

• If you upgrade to a newer version or update of Arcserve UDP, you must re-create the BMR ISO using the proper Windows AIK or ADK level to include support for latest features and bug fixes. However, once a BMR ISO is created, the ISO file can be used for the same OS level. The following OS levels can use the same ISO:
  • ISO created using Windows 7 WAIK – works for Windows 2003, Vista, 2008, 2008 R2
  • ISO create using Windows 8/8.1 ADK – works for Windows 8, 8.1, Server 2012, Server 2012 R2
  • ISO created using Windows 10 ADK – works for Windows 10