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DisasterRecovery: can't duplicate box

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8 replies

by scrow

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I've been charged with creating a detailed Disaster Recovery Plan. I have 3 servers.

1. On the Risc 6000 box: no problem, worst case scenario, get replacement box from IBM, boot off of mksysb, Lone-Tar gets retored with mksysb, so use that utility to restore all data.

2. But on WinNT box, it's a generic build off of an AcerOpen motherboard with PIII 500mhz cpu. It has an Adaptec SCSI Controller. What if exact same specs aren't available? I'm using Veritas Backup Exec 8.0. If I reload the OS, then Backup Exec, Then perform a restore including the Registry, what happens with different drivers? Couldn't different drivers or different registry entries cause the NT to crash or be very difficult to overcome?

The 3rd Server is just a Win98 file server, Same questions for it.

Any other resources that you can suggest for Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan would be very helpful.

Thanks,
SteveC.

8 replies

by klaro

In NT driver change defently can force a blue screen. But you can avoid it by selecting hardware close to the present one, by meens of graphic card and motherboard chip sets and CPU. If the LAN card is different just change drivers. If graphic board is to much diffetrent, you might end up seing nothing at all. The boot in VGA mode and install drivers for the new card and reapply service pack. This need the present of NT system allready restored or installed to machine.

The file server data should NOT be on the boot drive, if this is correct then backup data and when necessary restore data on the new hardware. After Win 98 has been "image" applyed.

But allways use hardware you can purchase also after 3-4 years. And use ghost imaging for backup and restore the operating system.

Sencerelly
Klavs Rommedahl.

by cdeclercq

The way I got around that is by doing a restore onto a new box, then running winnt setup in repair mode, you can hit F6? and choose new drivers for the SCSI and then can boot up using your new machine. The problem with BSOD's is iffy, you have to manually remove all the uncompatible old drivers from the new installation, disabling devices sometimes works, but I don't have as good luck that way. To perform true disaster recovery, use the same servers. That is why we spend the money on compaqs. I had to move a Dell workstation that was our server over to a compaq, same thing basically happened, moving from IDE to SCSI, different everything drivers. What I did was install all the drivers on the old box, and during a reboot the new ones detected, and the old ones failed to start. One issue with the boot.ini file, is you may have to modify it manually to point to the correct device using NT recovery disk. Would recomend trying to avoid this, if you are doing disaster recovery, then should always setup a similar server for disaster recovery, therefore good documentation, and up to date equipment.

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