Why Bare Metal Recovery is so Important
Severe data loss has been known to cause organizations to fail. But even partial data loss can disrupt your business operations causing adverse. negative effects. Data loss, system failure or inadvertently and even intentionally deleted data can happen at any time. Being prepared for the unexpected with a backup system that includes Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) to safeguard your data is essential.
The process of deciding on a suitable backup and restore approach and properly implementing the chosen plan of action is necessary for consistent and reliable IT operations. BMR is a pivotal strategy for any businesses where systems need to be restored to their original state within a desired Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
The ability to recover from a disaster can test every aspect of an organization and often requires significant investment in both labor and time, which is why choosing the right BMR solution is so important. A key component of a good BMR tool is the ability to recover a server to similar and/or dissimilar hardware. This allows you to utilize the existing infrastructure you have at your disposal after a disaster without the requirement of replicating old systems. The search for often antiquated systems can take days, weeks or months or in some cases may not be possible. Waiting for the hardware while data is unavailable can cost an exorbitant amount of lost time, business and money.
Benefits of BMR Software include:
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Critical systems back up and running within minutes
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Recovering data and operating systems with minimal downtime or interruption
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Servers and workstations are bootable in minutes
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Creating an bootable ISO
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Ability to clone machines
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Restore a system to similar or dissimilar hardware
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The option to perform physical to virtual or virtual to physical restores
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Having a comprehensive, user-friendly GUI with flexible options for a variety of procedures
What is Bare Metal Recovery
A disaster refers to a system failure, disk drive failure or other severe occurrence that renders data inaccessible. To recover from such a disaster, data must be restored to a working state using a system backup. But a standard backup vendor does not prepare for disaster recovery. DR involves a set of procedures using BMR software that must be installed prior to a disaster.
BMR is indispensable for meeting RTOs after a disaster. BMR allows a server, including data and system information, to be completely restored from a ‘bare metal’ state without having to rebuild the server from scratch and without prior partitioning or installing operating systems.
In the event of an operating system crash, you might not be able to load the OS in order to start a recovery task. Here is a prime example where Bare Metal Backup and Recovery tools are critical to be able to rebuild.
BMR may be required for:
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Hard drive failure or system crash
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Lost or stolen laptop
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Server hardware refresh
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Transition from physical to virtual servers
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New PC or laptop
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Transition from HDD to SSD
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Software upgrade disaster
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Virus that corrupts the local operating system
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Inadvertent or intentional deletion of critical data
How SEP BMR for Windows & Linux Works
By implementing a business continuity strategy against disaster utilizing both SEP backup software and SEP BMR, you can restore entire physical and virtual servers, operating systems, databases, and applications quickly and easily. This recovery method can be achieved within minutes, regardless of the type of hardware in use.
SEP creates snapshot backups that can be restored to any type of media at any location, on-site, off-site, or in the cloud, using Bare Metal Recovery. The data repository can be selected using a disk-to-disk or disk-to-disk-to-tape strategy.
After a disaster, the media is installed on the replacement server, the BMR ISO file is booted and the Similar/Dissimilar Wizard starts. The Dissimilar Hardware version allows driver installation during the recovery process and enables recovery to any server model or brand, whether physical or virtual. The computer is connected to the network to establish a connection with the SEP backup server and the desired saveset is selected and the automated disaster recovery begins. Once the recovery process is complete, the newly created operating system is rebooted and the server, with all of its restored settings and data, is accessible.
If recommended backup procedures are implemented, SEP Bare Metal Recovery ensures that in the event of a disaster, all data backed up before the system failure can be recovered to completely recreate the original environment.
