This is not my first experience with disaster recovery with backupexec. I do the procedure every year as part of the normal disaster recovery plan my company has.
I'm using the IDR cd made with V9.0 build 4454. Before I begin, I have made a second full backup of this server just in case it was an issue with the backup set...but i get the same results...
Basically, the thing that has changed since last year is that I now restore to another new computer (dell poweredge sc420)... That's it. The restore worked in the past on a dell workstation 470.
Here is the story...
Goal : restore the media server (where backupexec is installed) on a different hardware server using idr from backupexec.
The original backupexec media server has scsi 3 raid (adaptec) controller. The restore hadware server is running with a sata controller and hd.
The steps :
1) boot with the idr cd, press enter to start the process
2) delete the suggested partition and create 1 partition of 38Gb ntfs. (the original server has 2 partition, 1 for the dell diagnostic of 32 Mb and 1 of 32 gb ntfs)
3) server reboots from the hd, then gets to the idr wizard. I choose assisted and uncheck the same hardware option.
4) choose locally attached drive (an lto locally attached to an adaptec card is connected).
5) the server reboots from the hd, then starts looking for the attached tape device..Find's it. I click on "i will provide the tapes", then insert the tape form the last full of this server.
6) by the way, when windows discovered the device and the networking, I cann tell you that the networking works because i see in real time when the dhcp server gave this server an ip. I can also ping from the dhcp server this recovery server whithout problem. Please note that all this is being done in a self-contained network lab (closed network with 1 dhcp server, 1 laptop as a client and 1 recovery server all plugged in a switch...not connected to the net..)
7) I put the tape in, it finds the C partition that i choose to restore to the C of the newly created partition on the server. This goes without problem. I can even see software and system hives beeing restored and merged sucessfully. The only thing that does not seem to fully restore is the wmi repository...no big deal...I think.
8) Then it ask me if i want to restore the next set on the tape wich is the system state. I click on restore set, then nothing happens for about 2 or 3 seconds, then i see the windows 2000 background for about 1 second (the wizard just closed on me at this point) and the server restarts.
The problem with this is that the windows restore is half-way done at this point without the system state. I'm missing enough files that server will freeze just before going to the graphical part of windows..(i see the dos status bar saying strating windows...) then nothing. Doing a restart in safe mode goes no further results has it freeze too. Obvisouly i missing anough files or registries entries to prevent windows to start properly.
Looking at the log of the wizard (using earth commander to access the files), the last line is "restoring system state". That's it. I don't have, like many of you, connection refused or access denied. I can confirm the server is the same by ping by name at the dhcp server.
My question is : what can make the wizard quit on me like this ? I have tried at least 10 different things in the last 2 weeks at this.... Of course this is preventing me from continuing my disaster recovery plan as i need the media server to recover the others...
Also, installing from scratch won't do me any good, cause I could not restore the windows installation while i'm using it....catch 22 here...
Please help...
Anything to put on a track would be greatly appreciated.
Steve.