Image of a live server

IrishB.ie

Need to take an image of a live server (Win 2003). Anybody been through this before? Any issues? What software did you use?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

BaconZombie

VMware vCenter Converter will let you do a live snapshoot of a Server running most current OS's.

http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vcenter_converter_standalone/4_0

TouchingVirus

That software only appears to be about converting physical images into VMware compatible disc images, not about backing up/restoring physical images. I'm open to correction on it, but that's my understanding.

Acronis True Image Server (not free AFAIK) will do what you want. I've been using True Image Home on the PC here for over a year doing live backups and it's done it's job great

IrishB.ie

Thanks guys, I had been looking at Acronis but its cost prohibitive. I was just looking to take an image of a Win 2003 Server before its upgraded to 2008 incase it all went pear shaped. Ordinarily I'd just backup the files off the server. Looks like it might be a sunday night job then if it has too be shutdown.

TouchingVirus

When you're upgrading you'll have to shut it down/take it offline.

So while it's down factor in some program like Clonezilla to image the hard drive

IrishB.ie

TouchingVirus wrote: »

When you're upgrading you'll have to shut it down/take it offline.

So while it's down factor in some program like Clonezilla to image the hard drive

The plan was to do an In-place upgrade (hate upgrading, I'd rather a fresh install) but have now been given auth for another server so happy days. So no upgrade, fresh install and redundancy:D

woolymammoth

never used it, but drive image xml does live imaging.

wasim21k

macrium reflect is best to take image of live server and disk snap is another option,

ger664

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

qwertz

I can't believe that I am recommending something from Symantec but BESR (Backup Exec System Restore) is working pretty well for my current client.

Tomtata

+1 for Acronis

They have a 15 day trial on most of their products - Thats should be enough to cover you.

See: http://kb.acronis.com/content/2768

Capt'n Midnight

NTBACKUP - do full system state and system drive as one backup and do data seperatly

you can then do a fresh install of windows on another machine and restore overt the top , might not be as fast as restoring an image BUT you can restore to different hardware if you choose the option to not overwrite existing files.

galait

Drive Snapshot - Cheap , have used it for years and have about 40 servers backing up with it every night using differenital backup , I have images for the last 31 days of each server ,

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/down.htm

I also use disk2vhd to virutalise server's and create images nightly on critical servers

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415

rolion

you have to check the software limitations as some "cloning" programs doesn't like dynamic disks or various "flavours" of RAID cards/controllers...

so check first what reqs needs the software and if they apply to your hardware !
good luck.

Standard Toaster

woolymammoth wrote: »

never used it, but drive image xml does live imaging.

Have used this countless times, works quiet well we bought 5 licenses.
Couple of extra steps needed when restoring to a <NT6.0 box mind.