Universal Restore possible?

[Ramon88]

We've been using and upgrading Retrospect for many years (since 1992) to back up our local mix of servers and workstations. Although sometimes there have been strange events, so far it has suit our needs.

 

Now we have a different requirement and wonder if Retrospect would be able to help us out as well, or if it's something that it will be able to do in the near future.

 

This is the situation:

 

- We have a number of web/media/data-servers at a remote datacentre.

- We wish to periodically backup the total system-state of these servers to a storage device (NAS or storage server) at that location.

- We want to be able to do a bare metal restore of a server to preferably a virtual server (Server running Windows Virtual server) or a hardware-different (spare) machine (kind of what Acronis calls Universal Restore).

 

The motivation is that we want to be able to have a server up and running as fast as possible. By restoring to a spare machine or a spare machine running windows virtual server, we can do this remote and quickly. Afterwards we can repair or replace the defective server and restore that to full function, while in the meantime have only very little downtime. Because we have different servers with different hardware components a 'universal restore' would be a mandatory feature, also when restoring to a virtual server.

 

We know that Retrospect with the right add-on can do a bare metal restore. But it seems this has to be the same hardware, which might not be possible when a critical hardware component breaks down.

 

Is this possible with the current Retrospect and if not, will it be possible in the near future?