How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app
-
Congrats. And thanks to @DustinB3403 for jumping in to help.
-
its syncing back with my sensors! With that said I CAN"T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR YOU HELP! But I can thank you with beer @ Spiceworld if I can make it this year!!!!
I'm letting the database rebuild now about 1-2 months of data and I'm back in business.
I have no friggin clue why we couldn't see the data yesterday. Just for shits and giggles, I created another VM, used the windows 7 iso and booted, and did the repair option and I pointed to the back up, it still won't let me load it. I have no clue why.
But none the less, I am able to attach the VHD from the windows backup, and see my actual system image and pull my individual files from my database.
My app is a security system
-
I thank Dustin big time he has helped me out tremendously!
-
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
its syncing back with my sensors! With that said I CAN"T THANK YOU ENOUGH FOR YOU HELP! But I can thank you with beer @ Spiceworld if I can make it this year!!!!
You missed him at MangoCon this week!
-
@krisleslie ... awesome!
@DustinB3403 great job!!!!
-
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
-
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
Bingo.
-
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
I think even @scottalanmiller has back peddled on install XS on USB. Might want to just weigh the options there
-
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
I think even @scottalanmiller has back peddled on install XS on USB. Might want to just weigh the options there
I think if you do it the way we suggest now, it's OK.
Though it is not technically supported by Citrix if you ever want support.
TBH I am still on the fence what I would do if doing things over.
The one thing is that XS is pretty easy to recover from a boot failure, as you saw first hand. (IF you have the metadata backed up which I think you did not, correct?)
-
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
I think even @scottalanmiller has back peddled on install XS on USB. Might want to just weigh the options there
Yeah, it's still a good method for deployment, but it is not for the faint of heart. It requires a bit of work that isn't solidly documented yet.
-
@BRRABill said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
I think even @scottalanmiller has back peddled on install XS on USB. Might want to just weigh the options there
I think if you do it the way we suggest now, it's OK.
Though it is not technically supported by Citrix if you ever want support.
TBH I am still on the fence what I would do if doing things over.
The one thing is that XS is pretty easy to recover from a boot failure, as you saw first hand. (IF you have the metadata backed up which I think you did not, correct?)
Correct I did not. But I was still able to recover manually. Sucked but was doable.
and you're right - if you push the logs out and don't save them locally, you should be fine on USB. I'd be surprised if Citrix wouldn't support you because of that change.
-
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@BRRABill said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
I think even @scottalanmiller has back peddled on install XS on USB. Might want to just weigh the options there
I think if you do it the way we suggest now, it's OK.
Though it is not technically supported by Citrix if you ever want support.
TBH I am still on the fence what I would do if doing things over.
The one thing is that XS is pretty easy to recover from a boot failure, as you saw first hand. (IF you have the metadata backed up which I think you did not, correct?)
Correct I did not. But I was still able to recover manually. Sucked but was doable.
and you're right - if you push the logs out and don't save them locally, you should be fine on USB. I'd be surprised if Citrix wouldn't support you because of that change.
Yeah, that would be an odd reason to not accept your money for support.
-
@scottalanmiller said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@BRRABill said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Dustin's more genuis than I am lol! We ran into some serioush issues with my install. So I'm gonna come back and revisit the best practices cause I untimately want to use a USB to install XS to and then have XO as a VM so it can help out with backups.
I think even @scottalanmiller has back peddled on install XS on USB. Might want to just weigh the options there
I think if you do it the way we suggest now, it's OK.
Though it is not technically supported by Citrix if you ever want support.
TBH I am still on the fence what I would do if doing things over.
The one thing is that XS is pretty easy to recover from a boot failure, as you saw first hand. (IF you have the metadata backed up which I think you did not, correct?)
Correct I did not. But I was still able to recover manually. Sucked but was doable.
and you're right - if you push the logs out and don't save them locally, you should be fine on USB. I'd be surprised if Citrix wouldn't support you because of that change.
Yeah, that would be an odd reason to not accept your money for support.
Depends how stickler-ey they are.
-
@scottalanmiller constantly says that vendors can't refuse support to you when you have third party HDDs and RAM installed in their servers.
So I don't really see this being that different. Is it possible they could refuse you? Sure, likely, doesn't seem likely.
-
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@scottalanmiller constantly says that vendors can't refuse support to you when you have third party HDDs and RAM installed in their servers.
So I don't really see this being that different. Is it possible they could refuse you? Sure, likely, doesn't seem likely.
Well, they can't REFUSE you, but they can easily say "yeah, this is all caused by you writing to USB" or "yeah, this is caused by those EDGE drives"
-
@BRRABill said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@scottalanmiller constantly says that vendors can't refuse support to you when you have third party HDDs and RAM installed in their servers.
So I don't really see this being that different. Is it possible they could refuse you? Sure, likely, doesn't seem likely.
Well, they can't REFUSE you, but they can easily say "yeah, this is all caused by you writing to USB" or "yeah, this is caused by those EDGE drives"
@scottalanmiller - comment?
-
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@BRRABill said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@Dashrender said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
@scottalanmiller constantly says that vendors can't refuse support to you when you have third party HDDs and RAM installed in their servers.
So I don't really see this being that different. Is it possible they could refuse you? Sure, likely, doesn't seem likely.
Well, they can't REFUSE you, but they can easily say "yeah, this is all caused by you writing to USB" or "yeah, this is caused by those EDGE drives"
@scottalanmiller - comment?
DELL was actually willing to work through a lot more with me than I thought they would when I had the EDGE drives. But ultimately, they can only help to the drives because they aren't DELL drives.
@scottalanmiller will say ... if you buy a DELL, buy DELL stuff, I am betting
-
I've worked with other vendors who will support their product if you have other hardware present, but they can't support that other hardware if it isn't theirs. So, if you have a hard drive that wasn't from them, they aren't going to support that hard drive. If it's plausible that the issue lies on the hard drive, they're going straight to that and pointing the finger at the manufacturer of the hard drive. Path of least resistance.
-
Seems to me that the industry should want to support the USB adoption of hypervisor installs as a mandatory thing. I see it being easier to recover from and not waste precious hdd space.
-
@krisleslie said in How to recover system image from Windows 7 using the backup & restore app:
Seems to me that the industry should want to support the USB adoption of hypervisor installs as a mandatory thing. I see it being easier to recover from and not waste precious hdd space.
I think that you'll find that that never catches on. People doing that are purely in the "Free" space and not of any value for vendors to support. And vendors don't want to encourage bad behaviour - that's why XenServer officially doesn't support software RAID and VMware won't support it period, official or not, it just doesn't exist. Because they want to define a baseline of what good looks like and push customers to set up their environments properly. Helping them to cut corners makes it easier for things to fail and people to blame the hypervisor instead of finding where the fault really lies.
So while you can do USB backups and restores, no one has a reason to want to make it easy. It's not good for the vendors and it is not good for you. USB backups are high touch, high effort, high risk.
Instead of using USB drives, get a small NAS device like ReadyNAS, Synology or ioSafe. Two 6TB WD Red drives in RAID 1. Attach over the network. It's cheap and so much better. Now you can restore without needing to be physically present. Now you can manage your backups all the time. Now you can safely schedule. Now you can connect to more than one device at a time.
Using USB Drives for backing up your servers really falls below the home line and all of the vendors, across the board, have a strong interest in protecting their customers from the availability of that option. What that means is - if bad ideas exist, managers might choose them no matter how much IT warns against it. But if the option does not exist, it keeps IT from having to explain why it is a bad idea.
