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IDR is Worthless

Jon_Ziminsky
Level 4
I am posting this to express my extreme and utter dissatisfaction in the Intelligent Disaster Recovery option offered by Symantec. The product is worthless.
 
I followed all of the instructions found in the Admin Guide to the tee. All i can say is I am VERY glad I tested this prior to an actual Disaster. Here are the results of my test:
 
System - Windows Server 2003 w/ SQL Server 2000
 
I ran the IDR wizard to create the bootable CD image for the server. I reran the wizard to create the IDR diskettes as well as the ASR files, just to be safe. I provided the wizard with my Windows key, so i would not have to dig and find the information in a disaster situation. I grabbed the latest RAID drivers for my equipment and made a floppy with those as well.
 
Brought the server down, replaced both HDD, put the IDR bootable CD in the drive and booted her up. The pink IDR screen showed saying my bootable media is indeed bootable and everything is well. I hit enter to begin the recovery process. IMMEDIATLY the wizard asks for my Windows Server 2003 disc to be put into drive A:... I figure okay it is on the disc, so i hit enter. It still wants the disc. I rumage around find the disc and plop it in. Excellent things are moving forward. I hit F6 to load RAID drivers, and F2 to start the ASR process. ASR promplty begins and asks for my ASR floppy(good thing i made it, even though it is on the IDR bootable CD) I give it the floppy and it begins the install process. After a few minutes of loading files it tells me that it cannot find AMDIDE.sys and aborts the install....
 
2 hours later, after searching around the forums, and web, i gave up. I could have had the server back up and running using a manual recovery process in less time.
 
My suggestion to anyone considering IDR is to save your money, as it does not do what it says it will!!
 
4 REPLIES 4

Ms__Creant
Level 4
I am using it and have tested it restoring to the exact same machine & hardware - w/SQL Server 2000 - no problems except I have to reinstall the SQL program when I restore using IDR....other than that, works peachy.

Ken_Putnam
Level 6
Great!  But there are waaaay too many complaints about it here on the forums for me to ever recommend it
 
Just out of curiosity, how much time did you save compared to a manual Disaster Recovery?  or did you even bother to compare?

Ms__Creant
Level 4
Good point - I didn't do a comparison, but installing updates to Windows Server OSs alone can take 10 hours!Woman Indifferent

Ken_Putnam
Level 6
Why would you be installing Windows Service?
 
partition the drives the way you want them
install Windows with enough networking to see the media server (if not the media server) (using a slipstreamed CD if you want)
Restore All/Replace
Boot
Restore SQL
Boot
 
You're back where you were when the backup was taken

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 07-17-200712:29 PM