The DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT) is a tool within Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. SRT helps you recover a system that no longer start at all. Instead of having to first restore the operating system, then install alla patches, updates, applications and then restore the application backup, SRT can roll back a complete system.
SRT use a storage method which only stores one copy of any file with a unique content address computed by a 128-bit MD5 cryptographic algorithm. This means that if you have a number of similar machines the first machine will take the same amount of space as the space that you backup. But the other machines will only need 2% to 5% of space.
Before you can restore anything with SRTÂ you will have to create a recovery point schedule. This schedule will tell DPM how often to backup (create recovery points) the server and also the which recovery set to use. The recovery set define what to include in the recovery point. SRT includes two default recovery sets:Â Â Â Â Â
- System Volumes (system files, system settings and boot files)
- Disk Layout (disk information, including master boot code, partition table, partition and volume information)
You can create custom recovery sets, example to protect extra volumes, from DPM System Recovery Tool.
After you have create a schedule and you have at least one recovery point sucessfully created you can restore your machine. You can administrate both schedules, recovery sets and recovery points from DPM System Recovery Tool.
To do a bare metal restore you need to create a client boot CD. The client boot CD will be used to boot the target machine and contact the DPM server. This CD is not a unique for each machine, you can create it in DPM Recovery Center.
To restore your machine you can do like this
- Make sure the orginal machine is down and offline.
- Boot the target machine with the client boot CD (SRTBootClient.iso)
- DPM System Recovery Tool will start and you will be asked for TCP/IP Configuration
- After you have input TCP/IP configuration the system will wait for a signal from the DPM server
- Start Recovery Center at your DPM server and select your server. You can see all information about the recovery points in recovery center. Click Roll Back System to start the recovery. The DPM System Recovery Tool Rollback Wizard will start.
- In the Rollback Wizard you can select recovery point, recovery sets to restore and disks to include. In the end of the wizard you start the rollback.
- After a short while your target machine will be rebooted and the roll back is complete. You will get a report in HTML format and also information about the result in the recovery center.
Some screenshots from the process
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[…] Last year I did a test on DPM System Recovery Tool. The DPM System Recovery Tool (SRT) is a tool within Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. SRT helps you recover systems that no longer start at all. Instead of having to first restore the operating system, then install all patches, updates, applications and then restore the application backup, SRT can roll back a complete system. you can read about that here. […]