BESR 2012 bare metal disaster recovery to virtual machine

[Unified]

Hi,

I am having a bit of trouble restoring a physical server to a virtual (VMware) environment.

We use Backup Exec 2010 for our daily (full) backup-plan.
As a disaster recovery option I saw Backup Exec 2012 as a step-up path because we could recover our complete physical environment back to a virtual (VMware) environment and have it running in no-time. I saw the video and read that:
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"Backup Exec 2012 includes hardware independent, bare metal disaster recovery built in, enabling you to quickly recover failed servers to dissimilar physical hardware or to a virtual machine"
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I created a data recovery site in a colocation with three (licenced!) vmware hosts on which I can do a quick restore of the physical servers.
As a test I created a backup to USB-drive of a physical server and took it to de data recovery site. There I created a virtual template of this physical server with the same specs (Win 2008 32bit, 2 72 Gb SAS disks, 4Gb Mem) and roled out a server. Started the server with the standard data recovery disk and the USB drive in pass-through mode attached. The complete restore is flawless until the final reboot. After this reboot the virtual hardware should be recognized, but it seems the server is in a hanging state and the virtual hardware is not recognized at all?!?
Instead it tells me:
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"Windows Setup could not configure Windows on this computer’s hardware"
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So i thought I would try to restore to a physical server to check if anything is wrong with the backup.
When I do a complete restore to similar hardware the server boots flawlessly.

What am I doing wrong/missing in the proces of restoring a server to dissimilar (virtual) hardware?

[deepak_t]

In BE 2012 if you intend to recover your physical server to virtual machine then along with backup of physical server you need to add stage for convert to virtual where it will create virtual machine along with virtual disk and inject right drivers so that when you try to boot it as virtual machine it will work. Please look at video in link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-u6oWdmDPM

[Unified]

Aha, I see. I was under the impression that the recovery DVD injected the drivers during the System Recovery process.
The restore of a Physical Win 2003 x64 in the recovery site went flawless. I am just having troubles with the Win 2008 servers  

Does this option also work for backup to tape?
For testing purposses I am using a USB-disks but when finally impemented I have to restore the complete environment from tape. Can I still restore normal files back to the pysical server from tape if I have to?

[Colin_Weaver]

I hope you are not mixing up BESR (Backup Exec System Recovery) which is now called SSR (Symantec System Recovery) with the capabilities of Backup Exec 2012's ability to restore to Virtual Systems.

If you are BESR/SSR is a completely separate product with it's own forum. However BESR/SSR do not use tape and only use disk based images. 

[Unified]

So I guess I am then?!?

I thought that Backup Exec 2012 could restore a complete server from tape directly into a virtual environment from tape.
That's what I wanted because I don't want to invest in a load of USB drives just to have a backup that could be used to do an emergency recovery from my environment.

Whats the point in upgrading from Backup Exec 2010 for me then if I still have to have the original hardware to recover my servers?

[Colin_Weaver]

In thoery, Backup Exec 2012 can do a backup and recover to Virtual server. Just the terminology you are using seems to be crossing the boundaries between two separate products.

I belive it can also do a backup to tape and simultaneously stream the data to a Virtual server so that you have more immediate startup of your VM should the real server fail.

You probably need to start with the admin guide for 2012 and review the options for restong to virtual server. Or download a trial edition and test it yourself.

EDIT: or even watch the video someone else posted earlier in this thread.

[NManer · Accepted solution]

In Backup Exec 2012, we have a feature called 'SDR- Simplified Disaster Recovery'  where in you can perform bare metal recovery and restore backup of physical hardware to Virtual machine.

SDR supports recovering from disk as well as Tape drives by just connecting them to system to be restored.

However, for restoring from locally attached devices (tape/disk), you may need to provide .DR file. For, disks, it is located in Disk storage folder and for tape, you have to provide it separately.

For the error message you received during boot:

"Windows Setup could not configure Windows on this computer’s hardware"

You can try simply disabling sysprep by adding Runsetup=0  and run the SDR recovery process again.

Please refer below technote for disabling sysprep process:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH188910

[Unified]

Thanks NManer!!

The solution worked like a charm!

No problems whatsoever restoring the Windows 2003 server(s). Restoring the server, installing VMware-tools and cleaning up the hardware-related system devices delivers a smooth running server.

Now I can safely build a complete recovery-site based on a virtual environment.