Restore Best Practice

[LukeW]

Are there any guidelines on best practice restoring procedures.

Large restore around 450Gb.

Do you restore the data over the network? If you do restore over network, are the 2 servers taken off the network and connected directly to each other.
Or
Restore it to a local drive then copy the contents to its original location.

...it may be that there are too many factors dependant on network setup etc for people to answer the question.

Real life experiences and sysmantec theories would be a real help here.

regards

[DaveT]

It all depends on the speed of your network and how quickly you need the restore done.

If you have a fast (multi-gig) network connection, restoring over the LAN will work.

If speed is of the utmost essence, copy the backup files to a removable drive (preferably SATA or eSATA), and move the drive to the Server in need of Recovery.  Be sure to create a Recovery Disk that has the drivers for the external drive controller.  Once the Server has been booted off the SRD, Recover the Server as usual...from the removable drive to the Server's local drive(s).

USB or FireWire may suffice, but I prefer removable SATA drives or eSATA drives.


I would not, "Restore it to a local drive then copy the contents...".  You may run into issues with path/filename lengths, and issues with rights/permissions.

Hope this helps.