Using RS 7.7 recovery CD in a Vmware environment

[Richy_Boy]

Well, I thought I had best start looking at how the recovery CD works now we've migrated to 7.7.

 

I exported the Recovery CD ISO and copied it over to a NFS storage area I can access through Vmware.

 

I setup a VM to replicate the physical server I'm testing this with and launched off the ISO file only to be greeted with this:

 

 

It just kinda sits here and hangs.

 

Any ideas why it won't progress? I haven't tried this on a 'real' PC as I don't have any available right now, but was rather hoping this process would work so I could recover systems pretty quickly into our ESX system, until hardware can be sourced (if desired).

 

This may of course be something I'm doing wrong - couldn't find any documentation for the DR CD though

 

Rich

Edited February 23, 2010 by Guest

[Richy_Boy]

I should point out the VM has 2048MB RAM, two hard drives (OS + Data) and a GB ethernet port...

 

I doubt that will make any difference though?

 

Rich

[rhwalker]

This may of course be something I'm doing wrong - couldn't find any documentation for the DR CD though

Did you see the Retrospect 7.7 User Guide Addendum ?

[emulator]

I tested this with a Parallels Desktop setup and it worked ok. I did have to browse for the NIC drivers, but that was about it. I didn't see the hang that you're seeing.

[Richy_Boy]

Thanks for the replies, just taken a look in the Restore user guide (thanks rhwalker) and I'm not getting the wizard up at all, which is a bit of a show-stopper.

 

Any ideas Mayoff, has this been tested on VMWare at all?

 

I'm sure I read somewhere that the latest Restore CD was designed to allow you to re-instate failed machines on disimular hardware? In a DR scenario (i.e fire) I would have thought replacing 4-6 year old servers with identical hardware would be a touch tricky?

 

Rich

Edited February 24, 2010 by Guest

[Richy_Boy]

Ok, I've found a 'fix' for this...

 

It looks like a driver issue in the Recovery CD, so you HAVE to set you VM to use the LSI Logic SCSI controller.

 

Once changed (and you've told Vmware to update the SCSI drives to use this controller) the recovery software fires up as expected.

 

Someone at EMC/RS might want to add this to the documentation?

 

Hopefully this will help someone else out!

 

Rich

[Richy_Boy]

oh.. next problem, it doesn't seem to have the ethernet driver either as when you try to restore as a client it says the IP is 127.0.0.1.

 

Hopefully I can download this from VMware..

 

Rich

[Richy_Boy]

Blimey, it's a bit of a faff to get this working..

 

I decided to install the VMware tools (network driver only) but you have to run an MSI application, then the VMTools application after that.

 

It'll ask to reboot, just ignore that, pop over to install as client and it'll have an IP address (assuming you have DHCP running).

 

I might bump into more problems, but right now it looks like this will let my server connect to it and push the data onto the drives.

 

I'll report back it I have other problems.

 

Rich

[Richy_Boy]

Hmm, all seems to go well, but when I come to restore I get an error... and the logs clear everything up

 

 

+ Executing Restore from Backup at 25/02/2010 12:30 (Execution unit 1)

25/02/2010 12:30:23: Connected to minint-725jgf1

To volume Local Disk (C:) on minint-725jgf1...

 

- 25/02/2010 12:30:23: Restoring from DR_full_backups, Snapshot ******* Server, 17/02/2010 14:52:31

25/02/2010 12:30:37: Execution incomplete

Duration: 00:00:08 (00:00:06 idle/loading/preparing)

 

RS sees the c: and d: drives on the VM client, so I'm not quite sure what is failing here. The drive capacity on the destination is smaller than the original server, but there's still a reported 5-6GB free on the c: drive after the restore.

 

It seems odd there are no logs giving me a clue to why it failed. Network is fine, drives are fine, even installed the Vmware controller driver from the VMTools CD.

 

Any ideas?

 

Rich

Edited February 25, 2010 by Guest