This post explains the process of restoring a physical machine that has been backed up prior by Networker. The restore process will be a bare metal restore and is specific to environments where two NICs are used for backup, for example a private backup VLAN and a public VLAN. The Networker Bare Metal Recovery Wizard can only configure one physical NIC, therefore we need to use the CLI to configure the second NIC.
Procedure
To restore a physical server using a bare metal restore we first need to boot from the EMC Networker BMR ISO. Mount the ISO through the iLO or load the physical media into the server.
Once you have booted from the ISO you will be presented with the Networker Bare Metal Recovery Wizard. This may take 5 – 10 minutes to load after the command prompt window.
Set the current date and time, click Next.
Select the network interface that you want to configure, for this you should select the NIC that is connected to the public VLAN (i.e. the server OS netork settings) and click Next.
In the host and network screen enter the server name and domain if applicable. Enter the servers network settings and click Next. If the network is not configured correctly the restore will fail.
Confirm the physical disk on the server that you want to restore to and click Next. Note that the disk will be formatted and any existing data on the disk will be overwritten.
Before selecting the restore server we need to take some additional steps. In the background you will see a command prompt, you will need to do the following:
Configure the backup VLAN IP address using:
- netsh interface ip set address name=”Ethernet Adapter” static <IP> <Subnet Mask> replacing Ethernet Adapter with the name of the interface connected to the backup VLAN, and the IP and subnetmask accordingly.
- Run ipconfig /all to confirm the network settings are correct for both interfaces.
- Test network connectivity by pinging other IP addresses on the same subnet.
- If the server does not have access to DNS then you can type notepad.exe in command prompt and then open Boot (X:) > Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. Add the IP and host names of any servers you need to resolve and save the file.
Go back to the Networker Bare Metal Recovery Wizard. You should be on the Select Server page. Enter the name of the Networker server you are restoring data from and click Next.
If you entered incorrect network settings in the previous step then this lookup will fail. If the client is able to connect then you will be asked to select the backup you want to restore from.
Confirm the partitions to be restored on the next page and click Next.
Double check the information on the summary page and start the restore. Again note the warning that data on the disk(s) will be overwritten.
When the restore has completed the results page will appear. If the result was successful then click Reboot, the server will be restarted and boot to the recovered operating system.
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