BareMetalRestore dont work?

[Magnifico]

I try second day to make restore without success. I was backed up my master server with baremetal info. Backup was success, also storage verify was success. Now I want to try restore it for testing into another new created virtualmachine in ESXi. Boot Fast-CD I created with success, also updated it with Symantec update. Now I boot from it and make new hardware discovery and save it to master server. SharedResourceTree is OK, also made manually additional drivers just in case. Now I clone this "current" configuration and manually set correct incremental backup. I named this new configuration "cur1". But it is not changeable. It just dont allow to change it. I need to change it because I must configure new hardware. "prepare for restore" also performed successfully. Now I make clone from "cur1" to "cur2". "cur2" is now finally changeable, but now "prepare for restore" dont work and boot-CD also stops restore with "verify error". So, I must stay with "cur1", but it dont allow to change anything. How I then restore? And why restore at all interested about my hardware. This is not reliable backup. If my hardware blokes and I get new hardware, then there is big problem to restore it because maybe I just dont have drivers for it. When Windows is booted up, it usually itself finds hardware drivers, but NetBackup cant do this. Whole backup process looses its point if restoration can make problems. Restoration must always be more trustable than backup, otherwise it looses point.

[Marianne]

 I was backed up my master server with baremetal info.

BMR cannot protect a Master server. 

BMR is for clients or media servers backed up as clients.

Master server recovery is done via Catalog restore and is documented in the Troubleshooting Guide.

[Magnifico]

I dont want to protect master-server, I just want to test ability to restore and now I have only baced up master server itself, because I dont have jet clients installed. I just want to see it is able to restore. I dont plan to boot up this windows after restore. I just delete this test virtual machine after restore. 

[Linette_V · Accepted solution]

There are a few different issues raised in your post.

1) Marianne is wise as always: Master server backups cannot be restored by BMR.  Even  to test VMs.

2) When you select a specific backup you want to restore from you are making a 'point in time' (PIT) backup. This is saying you wish to restore a machines exactly as it was at that moment in time, therefore we cannot change the configuration.  There are 2 options, a) if you really do need it to use that exact backup, then you copy the PIT configuration to a new one which you can then modify or b) just copy the 'current' configuration which will use your most recent backup.

3) BMR only cares about the driver for your storage device (so we can write to disk), and your NIC (so we can get the restore information streaming across the network).  This is all we need to restore.  We don't need sound cards or any other things.  If your storage and NIC are compatible with windows p'n'p then we don't any other drivers (you'll see it listed as 'windows native'), as we use an enhanced winPE boot to perform the restore.  The BMR process therefore can use any hardware that WinPE can use.

[Magnifico]

Yes, I want ALWAYS restore exact copy, no matter is it last or previous incremental point, even if hardware is changed. Some network card or storage (not operating system) changes dont restrict windowst to boot up. After it is booted up, it usually itself make changes to hardware drivers. Thats how Windows works. Ok, I already see that NetBackup dont allow to do this. Ok, Im already accustomed to this and I dont try to change this restriction anymore, altough it makes things unstable in restore point of view, never know can I also restore something or I can just backup. But, example if I have new hardware and I must make changes into configuration (clone this "current" to new and make changes), then why you think I always want to restore the last incremental point. Normal backup software must allow me to restore from any incremental point. About your 2) suggestion:  I already tried this. I made clone from "current" (I choose some incremental point) and named it "cur1". "cur1" becomes read-only. Then I made additional clone from "cur1" to "cur2". Yes, now "cur2" becomes writeable and I was able to made changes into configuration to reflect discovered new hardware. Seems OK, but in reality not. While restore I encounter verify error. Then I tersted all those configuration by running "prepare to restore". "current" processed without errors. "cur1" also processed without errors. But "cur2" wasnt able to process "prepare for restore". So, I still dont have chance to modify configuration and choose restore point.  About your 3) note: Even NIC card can make big problems and even if this pre-installed boot-environment window in CD recognizes NIC and also can communicate with master server. In theory, the communication between client and master server is already intact, but NetBackup still refuse restore because it just dont like this NIC.......also I tried to make Legacy boot DVD. I tried make legacy shared resource tree, but give up for using it. The reason was that Legacy tree always need making "prepare for restore" and link this with tree. FastBMR dont need this linking. This means that Legacy restoration restores all machine automatically-silently. This is extremely dangerous. What if I made some mistake in configuration and loose important data? This is ridiculous. Also I dont want to make separate DVD for every server and workstation. I just dont want so much DVDs to keep. I want just one or maybe few for different hardware. Restoration is not procedure that must proceed automatically. Instead, it must ask many times "are I really want to format drive and loose information".