How to Guide:StorageCraft Cloud Services BMR

CONTENTS

Executive Summary ............................................................................3

StorageCraft Cloud Bare Metal Restore ................................................4

Conclusion .......................................................................................19

Executive SummaryThis document goes through, step by step, the process (with screenshots) for the StorageCraft® Cloud Services™ Bare Metal Restore (BMR) process and includes recovering to ESXi and Hyper-V Virtual Machines.

It is worth having a glance over this document so you are aware of the process before an actual Disaster Recovery (DR) situation. The StorageCraft Cloud was designed to virtualize your machines instantly but you need to be aware of the process to recover back to your site.

StorageCraft Cloud (BMR) process to complete a full system restoreScenarioYou have virtualized your server in the StorageCraft Cloud, it’s in a production environment and currently being used, you want to restore it to a machine onsite.

The outline:

1. Request a StorageCraft BMR drive online

2. Once it arrives (usually 2 – 3 days) and you are ready, boot from the BMR drive

3. During the process, it asks you to shut down your virtual machine (VM) in the StorageCraft Cloud

4. It downloads the changes since when you requested the BMR drive and restores the server

The BMR drive has been designed as a Bear Metal Recovery drive, i.e. recovering to physical hardware. However it is easy enough to recover directly to a VM and this document goes through the process.

At the time of writing this document ESXi doesn’t have the function in the VM BIOS to boot from USB and not all versions of Hyper-V support USB pass-through. This document will detail the process.

1. Request A StorageCraft BMR Drive online

a. Login to Storage Cloud Servicesb. Select the devicec. Go to Physical Restored. Complete the “Request A StorageCraft BMR Drive” form

2. Once it turns up (usually 2 – 3 days) and you are ready, boot from the BMR drive

a. If you are restoring to physical hardware, you will may to go into the boot menu or adjust the BIOS to boot from the USB disk. Go to #3

b. If you are using Hyper-V or VMWare please refer to the sections below

Hyper-V

This document uses Server 2012 however it’s the same process across all versions of Hyper-V

1. Connect the BMR USB drive to the host hypervisor, USB 3 port is obviously best if possible2. Go into Computer Management and then Disk Management

3. Right-click on the BMR drive and select “offline”

4. Create the VM with the settings you require including sufficient Hard Drive space in the VHD’s etc.

5. Add the BMR drive as a pass-through drive under Physical Hard disk

6. When you start the VM it will detect the BMR drive and start booting into the BMR environment.

ESXi

At the time of writing this document the BIOS for ESXi VM’s do not support booting from USB. In this document we use “Plop Boot Manager” http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/plpbt.bin.html

Download the current boot manager plpbt-5.0.14.zip. Extract it to get the disk image plpbt.img and copy it up to an available Datastore on your ESXi host.

Additionally, you need to be very careful using the DirectPath USB pass-through option if you are booting ESXi from a USB flash disk, you can run into problems if you select the wrong USB device. This process uses a slightly different alternative to the DirectPath USB pass-through option.

1. Connect the BMR USB drive to the host machine2. Create the Virtual Machine with the settings you require including sufficient Hard Drive space in the VMDK’s etc.3. In the Virtual Machine settings, under the Hardware tab, add the USB Controller4. Once you have added the USB Controller, add USB Device, this will allow you to select the “USB BMR drive”5. Go into the CD/DVD drive, add the plpbt.img Datastore ISO file and select Connect at power on.

6. Start the VM, when Plop Boot Manager loads, select “USB” to load the BMR environment

You may notice some errors while loading such as below but you can safely ignore these.

Once you are in the BMR Environment, the process is now the same regardless of Hyper-V, VMWare or a Physical restore (just remember to remove the USB settings from the VM config. If need be once you are done)

3. Wait for the BMR environment to Initialize and load the network interfaces

4. Login with your StorageCraft Cloud credentials

5. Select “Download Latest Changes”

6. Select “Start BMR”

7. Enter your StorageCraft ShadowProtect® Image Password

8. Select “Download Latest Changes”

9. STOP - This next step is very important – you must now RDP into your VM running in the cloud and shutdown the server. Your production environment will now go offline until the restore is complete

Only click Yes once the VM is shutdown

10. Wait for the BMR to update the image – do not click “Continue without Latest Changes”

11. Once the BMR Image is updated you will be able to select a recovery point.

Select the most resent recovery point

12. Partition disks. Select “Advanced Partitioning.”

13. Scroll down and add the partitions you want setup, make sure you are allowing plenty of space

Make sure your C drive is bootable

14. Click “continue” and commit the changes

15. Select the destination for each partition to restore

16. Click “Start NTFS block level restore”

17. Once its finished click “Continue”

18. Proceed with StorageCraft Hardware Independent Restore™ and reboot once complete

19. Once it’s rebooted remove the CD and USB drive

20. If you are restoring a Domain Controller you will need to go into Safe Mode and configure the Network Card with the correct IP address etc. otherwise for other servers you can do this once they start up if need be.

21. Windows will start up and may take an extra minute or so to start for the first time. Your BMR restore is complete.

504 Gateway Timeout errorsIf you get this error during the BMR wizard, right click, select Back and try your previous selection again

ConclusionThis document should help you understand the process and guide you through the steps to successfully complete a BMR from the StorageCraft Cloud.

Review our StorageCraft Cloud Services VPN How-To Guide which covers the VPN configuration which is useful while your VMs are running in the StorageCraft Cloud. Obviously once the BMR is complete you can remove the VPN configuration from your site and ensure services like email continue to flow.

Copyright ©2014 StorageCraft Technology Corporation. All rights reserved. This brochure is for informational purposes only. STORAGECRAFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. StorageCraft and ShadowProtect are registered trademarks of StorageCraft Technology Corporation. Cloud Services and hardware Independent Restore are trademarks of StorageCraft Technology Corporation. All other brands and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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