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Re: [G4l-general] Windows Server 2003, RAID & G4L
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From: Michael D. S. I. <mi...@ku...> - 2008-10-07 23:15:36
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On 7 Oct 2008 at 11:26, Tim Riley wrote: From: "Tim Riley" <ti...@me...> To: "G4L Mailing List" <g4l...@li...> Date sent: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 11:26:32 -0400 Subject: [G4l-general] Windows Server 2003, RAID & G4L > Can G4L create an image of a Windows 2003 Server machine running RAID 1?? The quick answer is yes, but with some issues that need to be know about the Raid 1 setup. G4L copies the disk and/or partitions at the physical level. So, to be absolutely certain of a backup, I would do an image of each disk of the raid 1 to be 100% sure. My only concern with only backing up one of the disk would be that the raid would get confused on which disk was the correct one if they were not in sync. You might restore the backup on one disk, but when you bring it back up, it checks the dates, and sees the other disk has a newer date, and thus wipes out the back disk. You might be able to force the rebuild, but that would depend on the raid setup, and I would want to test it before being sure. I do know that if you made backups of both drives, and restore both drives, it would be physically the same. Have not done it with 2003 server, but have done a three disk LVM disk setup on a machine, backing up each individual drive, and then imaging then to a new set. You might be able to do a process, in which you restored the one drive back to a disk, and disconnected the other drive. Bring the machine up with the second drive disconnected, and thus get that drive to have a newer date tag. Then shutdown the machine, and reconnect the second drive, and have it rebuild the raid. Again, I would definitely want to do a real test before counting on this. Many years ago, our College MIS had a Raid 3 setup, and one drive failed, and it was able to keep going. They got a replacement drive about a week later, and installed it, but something went wrong, and it lost everything. They never figured out what cuased the rebuild to corrupt the system, and I never had access to the system. I had Raid 1 on a Novell servesr log ago, and it had no problem. One had a disk go bad, and we just replaced it, with a new larger one, and it rebuild the system automatically on the new disk and rebuilt the mirror. Then we replaced the other original disk, and it rebult again. Then we configured the extra space as an additional volume. Also, is this setup as a software or hardware Raid? If you boot from the g4l cd, how does it see the disk and partitions. cat /proc/partitions Does it see the regular disks /dev/hdx and/or /dev/sdx? Does it see the raid (probable /dev/mdx? Hope that helps, but I would definatlly, want to do a full test to make 100% sure, or just take the time to do a backup of each disk. For my setups, I generally do a full g4l raw backup of the disks, but then also do an NTFSCLONE backup of the XP partition. The full g4l backup of an 80GB drive takes about 50 minutes with 98, XP, and Linux partitions. The NTFSCLONE of the XP only takes about 10 minutes (about 25% of drive). But most of the time, it is he XP that gets messed up, and being able to restore it in about 10 minutes is great. But, one must remember that the NTFSCLONE only backs up the NTFS partition (data). It doesn't included the MBR or partition table, so if you have a full disk crash, you need to restore those or recreate them before restoring the data. > > > This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner & ClamAV. > > This message and any attachments may contain information that is protected by law as privileged and > confidential, and is transmitted for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not the > intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, copying or retention of this > e-mail or the information contained herein is strictly prohibited. If you received this e-mail in > error, please immediately notify the sender by e-mail, and permanently delete this e-mail. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge > Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes > Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world > http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ > _______________________________________________ > G4l-general mailing list > G4l...@li... > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/g4l-general +----------------------------------------------------------+ Michael D. Setzer II - Computer Science Instructor Guam Community College Computer Center mailto:mi...@ku... mailto:mse...@gm... http://www.guam.net/home/mikes Guam - Where America's Day Begins +----------------------------------------------------------+ http://setiathome.berkeley.edu (Original) Number of Seti Units Returned: 19,471 Processing time: 32 years, 290 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes (Total Hours: 287,489) BOINC@HOME CREDITS SETI 6,534,166.7390 | EINSTEIN 2,019,669.4409 | ROSETTA 637,838.4953 |
