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Bare Metal Restore best practices and recommendation?

qiblatain
Level 5
Dear All,

We want to take the image of the whole operating system for Windows 2008 & windows 2003, unix & Solaris clients by using the Netbackup 7.0. We have nearly 100 clients having different operating systems and with 32 & 64 bits.
To take the operating system image, We are going to implement the BMR(Bare Metal Restore).
Please guide me the simplest and easy way, how to use the BMR.

Do we have to arrange a dedicated server for the BMR, OR, we can use our netbackup master server to have the BMR? Which one is the  best for us?

Please tell me the best practices and the concerns if any for the implementation of the BMR. 

Bundle of Thanks.
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Larry_Manno
Level 3
I have a question on the client install.  We are looking into setting up the BMR in our NB 6.5.4 environment.  All of our clients already have the client software on them.  When we enable BMR and start to use it, will we have to push out/re-install all of the clients on our servers for them to have the BMR part of the client?  Or is the BMR client peice already part of the client?

Thanks
Larry

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Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

Have you had a look yet at the BMR Admin Guide?
 
There is unfortunately no 1-page tasklist - it's a 205-page manual.

The Master will automatically be the BMR Master, but you will need a BMR Boot server for each O/S family:

(Extract)

You must have a boot server for each type of client that you want to protect. For example, a Solaris client requires a Solaris boot server, a Windows client requires a Windows boot server, and so on.
For UNIX, Linux, and legacy Windows restores, a boot server at a particular operating system version can only host SRTs of the same operating system version or lower. For example, a Solaris 9 boot server can host Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 SRTs, but not Solaris 10 SRTs.
For UNIX, Linux, and legacy Windows restores, a client at a particular operating system version requires an SRT of the same operating system version.

mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee
As Marianne mentioned,
1. BMR master by default gets deployed with NBU master. You need to enable it using bmrsetupmaster CLI. You can have a single BMR master server in your environment.
2. 7.0 onwards. BMR Boot server by default gets deployed with NBU client. You can enable BMR boot server using "bmrsetupboot -register" CLI.
    BMR Boot server is specific to client OS and version.
    General rule of BMR Boot server OS and version (UNIX)
    BMR Boot server OSversion  >= Shared Resource Tree OS verison ~= Client OS version.
    This is not applicable for Windows, I mean, w2k3 32 bit Boot server can restore w2k8 64 bit client. Only SRT needs to be created 64-bit. (NOTE: w2k8 client is supported in 701 release. Used here just to give example.)
3. In case your BMR master server satisfies this rule of BMR Boot server OS and version; then optionally you can enable BMR Boot server on BMR master server itself.
4. BMR BS is not a heavy process and used only for creating SRTs and in case of NW boot based restore. If supported you can even use VM instances to setup BMR BS.

Thanks.
-Mandar

Larry_Manno
Level 3
I have a question on the client install.  We are looking into setting up the BMR in our NB 6.5.4 environment.  All of our clients already have the client software on them.  When we enable BMR and start to use it, will we have to push out/re-install all of the clients on our servers for them to have the BMR part of the client?  Or is the BMR client peice already part of the client?

Thanks
Larry

Deepak_W
Level 6
Partner Accredited
Your NBU client is already having client for NetBackup, Pure Disk and BMR. No need to install / activate anything.

For BMR I usually ask people to go for NBU 7 as BMR prerequisite, configuration and deployment is quite easy with less dependancy.

Just to mention you do not need to have dedicated boot servers in NBU7.

For more information on BMR you can refer to BMR admin guide.

Hope this helps...

mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee

>>> Just to mention you do not need to have dedicated boot servers in NBU7.
Actually dedicated boot server was never required. In case of BMR restore based on BMR media boot is intended; after creating BMR Shared Resource Tree (system recovery critical software) ISO and burning this ISO on CD/DVD, the user could disable BMR BS. This BMR media now acts as an option to BMR BS.
Prior to 7.0, bmr boot server installation package was different; where 7.0 onwards BMR BS by default gets deployed along with NBU client installation. From 7.0 onwards, you need to enable BMR BS using "bmrsetupboot -register" CLI.

Thanks.
-Mandar

qiblatain
Level 5

Thanks, All of you, for your tremendous support.

I have configured BMR successfully, considering all your points.

Please can you guys now tell me, how to take the image backups of the servers via BMR & how to restore those images?

Once again, bundle of thanks.


StefanosM
Level 6
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
Hello,
I have a question about BMR. I read that you need one boot server per network segment. Is it trow that BMR boot server can not "pass" a router and can not boot a client on an other IP network. (Expert AIX If I remember correct)
Thanks
Stefanos

mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee
Please find below link containing presentation and complete demo on 701 BMR release.
https://symiq.corp.symantec.com/departments/pm/nbu/Pages/BMR.aspx
The demo is complete video on "BM...












Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
Mandar
Please double-check the link - seems to be inaccessible to non-Symantec staff...:

Server not found

Firefox can't find the server at symiq.corp.symantec.com.



Could you possibly re-post the video here? https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/backup-and-archiving/videos


mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee
Hi Marianne,

I think you are right. The symiq URL might not be accessible to non-symantec staff. Let me check with concerned folks and get back on this.
I can definitely re-post the video on www-secure.symantec.com. The video is divided into two clips; each clip is of size ~135 MB and ~40 mins play.
Do you have an idea if upload of this much size clips will be supported by this site?

Thanks.
-Mandar

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified

I hope our Community Manager will respond?

I'm looking forward to these videos!

mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee
www-secure.symantec.com does not support upload of AVI files. Below is the error message.
"The selected file BMR-Demo_clip1.avi cannot be uploaded. Only files with the following extensions are allowed: jpg, jpeg, png, gif."

Any alternative?

Thanks.
-Mandar

Marianne
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited Certified
 According to this post, avi is allowed: 
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/blogs/creating-technical-videoscreencast-connect-start-here


General Video Export Specifications

Allowed Extensions: mov, mp4, avi, wmv, mp3 -.MP4 or .MOV files preferred
Preferred size: 1024x728
Bitrate – 500-600/sec (if you experience blurring, try a higher bit rate - 800-1000/sec)
Audio: stereo, 128 bit

If you go to Video -> Create Video
Only the Video Thumbnail needs to be  jpg jpeg png gif

 If you scroll down to Video Upload:


Maximum Filesize: 250 MB
Allowed Extensions: mov avi wmv zip mp4 mp3

If you are still experiencing problems, please contact the Connect admins...

salamz
Level 4
Partner
Hi  Mandar Khanolkar

we all waiting for you to upload the videos.

Thanks 

mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee
Ok friends. I could upload the stuff.
Here is the link.
https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/videos/netbackup-bmr-701-release-windows-2008-client-physical-machine-virtual-machine-restore

Video Details:


===================================
NetBackup-BMR 701 release: Windows 2008 client Physical machine to virtual machine restore. : part-1 (BMR-Demo_clip1.avi)
This first part covers:
1. How to take clients BMR enabled backup
2. How to configure BMR Boot server and PXE service
3. (PTD) i.e. bmr discovery of destination client as this is dissimilar system restore example.
4. Dissimilar Disk Restore mapping and initialization original client config using discovered configuration.
5. Prerate to restore step

NetBackup-BMR 701 release: Windows 2008 client Physical machine to virtual machine restore. : part-2 (BMR-Demo_clip2.avi)
This part covers:
1. Virtual machine network boots over BMR boot server using PXE protocol
2.  Automated Restore of original client that was running on physical machine to this virtual machine instance.

===================================

Thanks.
-Mandar

gumbo
Level 4
I'm unable to access the link. I receive: Access Restricted. We're sorry but the author of this page has restricted acces to it. The .avi link itself doesn't work either.

TOURGolf
Level 2
I receive the same error stating access has been restricted.

Can you please help resolve the problem?  These videos would be invaluable to a lot of us.

mandar_khanolka
Level 6
Employee
I think the videos are not yet published. Here is the message from Swathi (NBU community manager).

Thanks Mandar. It usually takes up to 3 business days to have the videos published, or even more days depending on the backlog we have here. So please stay tuned. I shall keep you posted when I publish the videos. Thanks!

Thanks.
-Mandar

Carlos_V
Level 6
We must be patient

Regards!