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Way to make recovery image and backup to cloud
NewToTheGame
Member
in Help
I want to make a disk image that can be stored in the cloud in case if disaster, must run Windows vps.
Should probably offer encryption and a way to verify integrity.
Any ideas
Comments
Windows has built in tools for this.
The most generic method to capture a disk image offline is to use a rescue system.
Suppose you want to backup the machine Target, you need to have a separate machine Controller on the same LAN. Then,
Emulab uses a variation of this procedure to load and store disk images.
Name one after Windows 7 please.
Edit: Damnit. System image backup was also in Windows 8, and it was in Windows 10 until deprecated (that was the point I was originally going for).
Pretty much lots of options, if you can boot their boot disks via ISO method and have console access. And a big, fat pipe. Or time.
Something like Veeam.
But suggesting offline backups using a rescue system, I know he didn't explicitly say no, it would be a silly response to someone wanting recovery cloud services. Obviously they don't want downtime to periodically backup their images, they want to hot backup.
Windows server backup is also a option. And yes, can be installed on windows 10.
I realize that this is a very silly question, but is there a way to test a Veeam backup so that you know for sure that it will restore properly...without actually running the restore (and potentially losing all of the data on the "production" laptop if the backup has issues).
It's not silly, that's fucking practical. Not everyone has a supped up $KKK server they can test restores on that matches the production server (not all backup/recovery software supports bare metal restores (loading OS drivers at boot time when motherboard changes). Restore it to another visor. Restore it to another laptop.
There was a Windows 2012 physical server that was randomly failing. I needed to migrate the data over to 2016 but the server kept crashing before I could. I had recent Veeam agent backups and was able to restore that to a local Hyper-V 2019 on a spare local machine I had. That didn't shit the bed and I was able to copy the data over to 2016 on a new VM on a new physical server.
I know with Acronis, when doing a backup there is an option to verify, its basically a readback verification that the data didn't get corrupted or bit flipped, but generally backup solutions don't test restores very well and why many people don't.
Alternatively, if the laptop can withstand some downtime AND you can physically swap the HDD (getting a harder feature to have these days), then you'd just pop out the HDD for a clean one, restore there and then pop back in the production HDD after testing is done.
Jesus Christ, you're right. I was just able to add the role on 2016, but how do you install on Windows 10?
I could have sworn that Microsoft took that out in 2016 and that made server backup companies happy because they charge $$$. Looks like they fixed the 2012 limitations like 2TB limits and shit, whereas I thought they gave up and deprecated image backups for file based backups and gave all that business to the software companies.
So thanks, learned something new. I still wouldn't use it because of the lack of bare metal recovery and that Microsoft client restore experience from using Essentials has been nothing but bad.
I use "production" because I'm not doing anything in a workplace setting. So, having even two laptops with the same configuration is unfortunately not possible. Swapping in another HDD is a good idea I hadn't thought of - I have many old ones, though the size may vary. I may have to do this, though the downtime would be the limiting factor. I assume that I wouldn't be able to do a test restore (or explore/mass recover files) to an old desktop or something that had substantially different hardware...
It's unfortunate that the free version of Veeam limits you to one backup job and there's no inexpensive home license. It is annoying that it marks successful backups as having errors just because Windows says that having 1TB of free space on the destination network drive is "getting low on free disk space". I have it set to "Entire computer (recommended)" because the description says that it allows "fast recovery on any level," which I take as meaning I can use the same backup to do either a volume-level or file-level backup.
I'm using Veeam Agent for Windows. Is there a benefit to using Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition over Veeam Agent?
ETA: Would restoring to a VM in VirtualBox or VMWare or something else like that be a possible to test restore a backup?
I have used windows server backup a few years, and it does allow you to do a bare metal backup, as long as you have another disk volume or external mounted storage to push files to. I ended up needing a backup like that just a few months ago, and it worked flawless.
Testing or extracting files from an image is easy, restoring really comes down to the OS boot drivers being included or not. Restoring individual files doesn't have that issue. With Veeam Agent, you'd save your backup, and any other windows machine running Veeam would be able to open and extract files from it.
Not sure what you mean about the 1TB free space warning, unless you're trying to backup more than 1TB and then that makes perfect sense. Probably a setting you can change, but I've never ran into that. And yes, doing image based full backup can do image or file based restore, so its the best option when you have the storage and time.
Umm, B&R is useful for single console if backing up several PC's. Also might have the restore to hypervisor options and Agent might not. But if you're backing up to HDD or network, Agent is fine.
I've done that with Hyper-V and it would be doable in VMWare (not sure about free version though, I know ESXi free has backup API limitations, not sure about restore). I don't think Virtual Box would be supported.
Thanks to all of your replies guys. Usage scenario is quite simple. I have 2 Windows vps that are never in production. Both providers charge for snapshots, so wanted a DIY way to be able to restore in the case of catastrophe. Both offer the ability to mount a iso.
It may also become a way to have a backup of other machines too.