Restoration Prerequisites Datto Technical Support is always prepared and on stand-by to assist with business critical situations such as Bare Metal Restores (BMRs). If the situation allows, providing advanced notice of planned bare metal restores will help Datto's Technical Support Team ensure that the best resources available to aid in this process. Datto is available 24 hours a day 7 days a week with no holidays, in case you need any assistance at any time. For additional assistance, please contact a Datto Technical Support Engineer at 877.455.6015 or submit a support ticket by going to http://helpdesk.dattobackup.com. The USB BMR Process can be done using restore points from a SIRIS or ALTO. Have on Hand: 1. USB stick that is more than 4GB is size, to be imaged with the USB BMR Environment. 2. A ShadowProtect ISO. To get the SP ISO, click here. 3. A Windows Boot CD. 4. Any drivers (i.e.. Hardware RAID, trackpad, etc.) that may need to be injected separately. Note: If not on a CD they can be slip-streamed in during the USB BMR process. However they need to be in the actual driver format (i.e.. NOT in EXE, ZIP or any other compressed or executable format). 5. If the backups are Encrypted then the passphrase for the specified agent would need to be entered during the USB Bare Metal Restore Process. To proceed, the physical machine to be restored to must have: a USB port to boot the physical machine into the USB BMR Environment. be connected to the same network that the Datto. the ability to boot off of a USB port, when a bootable image is plugged into it. Known Incompatibilities Note: For any target machines that have a known incompatibility please use the ShadowProtect BMR. This will require a ShadowProtect Backup of a virtualized version of the production machine first. 1. The target machine is using 32bit Hardware. Note: 32 bit Windows OSs are supported by the USB BMR Process as long as the target machine is built with 64 bit Hardware. 2. The USB BMR is not intended to be a server imaging tool. It is meant to act as a tool to restore downed servers. This restore process is not meant to be considered a deployment tool. 3. Transmitting information to a SoftwareRAIDed OSs. Any OSs will be restored as a single partition. Note: In order to restore other SoftwareRAIDed partitions, restore the OS and then configure the other partitions in Windows as a SoftwareRAID. Once completed, file restore the necessary
snapshot on the Datto and transfer over. It would be wise to contact support to copy with Windows File Permissions as a regular file restore does not have the ability to do this directly. USB Boot Configuration To be able to boot to USB, follow the instructions below to configure the target machine. 1. Image the USB Stick. 2. Plug in (with the imaged USB BMR stick) and boot the target machine into the BIOS. 3. Configure the BIOS on the target machine to be able to boot to USB. Note: Most target machines will have different BIOS configurations, so it is important to understand where all the settings are for the specific target machine. Tip: If the target machine does not have the option to boot to USB directly, download and burn to a disk plpbt.iso. This will boot to the CD and from the interface choose to boot from USB. 4. Set the USB stick as the Primary Boot Device from the machine s BIOS. 5. Save and exit out of the BIOS. 6. Reboot the target machine.
1. Create USB Image USB stick at least 4GB in size that can be formatted. A Datto device that uses ShadowSnap to plug the USB stick into for formatting. 1. Plug the USB stick into one of the open USB ports on the back of the Datto device. 2. From the web interface, click the Restore link at the top of the page. Example: Click Restore 3. Select an Agent and Bare Metal Restore and then click Start USB Imaging when ready. Example: Start USB Imaging 4. Select the USB stick to have the device image as a bootable USB drive for the USB BMR Environment. Note: If no USB is seen here, click the to refresh. If the USB is still not seen, plug the USB into another port of the device, wait ~15 seconds and refresh again. 5. Click Start Imaging. Example: Choose a Disk Example: Start Imaging 6. Wait for the process to complete.
Example: Copying to the USB stick 7. Unplug the USB stick and start the USB BMR Restore process. Example: USB stick has Been Imaged
2. Bare Metal Restore Process The USB BMR is a new process that allows the target machine to be booted with a USB stick that has been imaged from the Datto UI. Limitations Not able to be used to restore to 32-bit hardware Note: 32-bit Operating Systems are able to be restored. We cannot restore to 32-bit HARDWARE because the USB BMR image is a 64-bit Operating System and cannot be read by 32-bit hardware when plugged in. Pre-requisites Be sure to have a monitor, keyboard and mouse plugged into the target machine. The target machine should also be connected to the same network as the Datto storing the backup data. Make sure that any Hardware RAID configurations are already set as needed, otherwise the BMR environment will not be able to recognize the drives in the way needed for the restore. In order for the target machine to be able to boot off of USB, please make sure that the USB boot option is enabled via the BIOS settings of the target machine. The Process 1. Plug in the USB flash drive while the target machine is off. 2. Boot the target machine from the USB flash drive. Note: This can take some time depending on the speed of the USB port. 3. The target machine will then populate the Welcome screen, click Get Started. Note: The interface automatically checks to see if there is any network connectivity. If the BMR environment reports there is no network connectivity, then check the cable and the port on the switch to which the ethernet cable is connected.
Example: Welcome Screen for the USB BMR Environment 4. Search for the hostname of the device that houses the backup data. Note: In most cases there will be only one device listed. If the datto device housing the backup data is not listed, enter the IP and attempt to connect. However, if it is not listed, then there most likely is a connectivity issue between the target machine and the Datto attempting to restore from. Example: Searching for a device
5. Click Select on the extreme right hand side next to the Datto device's IP address. Example: Selecting a device 6. Enter the Username and Password of a user that has access to the Local Web UI of the Datto. Example: Enter Local Web Access Credentials 7. Click Select next to the agent attempting the restore.
Example: Choose an Agent to Restore 8. Click Select next to the backup image wanted. Note: Sometimes the most recent image is not the healthiest image to use, due to the original production machine going down, unless new images of the virtualized version of the production machine were taken.
Example: Choose a Recovery Point 9. Choose either Automatic Partitioning or Advanced Partitioning. If choosing Automatic Partitioning, skip to step 26.
Example: Choose Partitioning Process 10. With the Advanced Partitioner single volumes or whole disks can be formatted/deleted. Click on the disk that you would like to restore to. Example: Advanced Partitioner Selecting Disk to Review 11. If there is a volume that the user is looking to restore, click on the volume and click Delete to remove that volume and prepare to restore it back using the BMR environment, then click Yes to commit the deletion. Note: After removing the partition the data is deleted.
Example: Click Delete and Yes to Commit the Deletion 12. Repeat steps 11 and 12 for any partitions that need to be removed. 13. Create a new partition by clicking Add Partition. Below is an Master Boot Record option. The user is not limited to what the original Production machine had. One can change from MBR to GPT and vice versa as the BMR environment is essentially creating a brand new partition. Example: Start Partition Creation Process 14. The Partition Editor will update its interface and give you options for your partition. Select the partition settings as necessary. GPT and MBR will have different options and below are the recommended options for restoring a bootable MBR partition. Click Add when the settings have been selected. Note: Make sure there is at least enough space on your new partition to be able to restore the partition information that is needed. If the partition is too small for the used space of any partitions then they will not be options to choose in the next step. Note: The BMR environment can be used to resize to smaller partitions if desired because the Datto is essentially copying thin provisioned information over to a brand new partition that is newly created. Note: The only partition that should be registered as bootable is the one that contains the WINDOWS folder, ShadowSnap ignores System Restore Partitions and writes all bootable information into the backup image that contains the WINDOWS folder. This causes less issues when needing to restore via BMR and VMR.
Example: Set Partition Settings 15. Repeat steps 13 and 14, for any partition that needs to be created. 16. Select the backed up partition data that should be restored to the partition just created. If no partition is listed, this is most likely due to the size of the newly created partition not being large enough to store the data that the backed up image contains. Example: Choose What Data Gets Restored to the Partition Created 17. Repeat step 16 for any other partitions that have been created. 18. Click Commit to save all changes and click Yes. Note: This is not actually copying data as of yet. This step is to create the partitions and associations of what data is to go to what partitions.
Example: Commit and Confirm the Changes 19. After the process has successfully committed, click OK. Example: Click OK 20. Partitions can still be created in this stage, if still needing to create partitions repeat steps 13 to 19. If completed with partition creation and association, then click Continue. Example: Click Continue 21. Review the size and volume information and then click Begin Transfer.
Example: Begin Transfer 22. Wait for the Resize and Transfer operations finish per volume. Example: Transfer Process
23. Once the Resize and Transfer processes are finish, it is time to finalize the restored image. Check Attempt to restore bootability. There is also the ability to slipstream drivers by clicking Add Drivers. This will allow drivers to be looked up by USB or external hard drive as well as Network Share. Note: If Attempt to restore bootability is not checked then the partition marked as bootable will not actually be bootable. This feature is added in case it was only necessary to restore a data partition, in which case, uncheck Attempt to restore bootability. Note: For drivers to be automatically installed via the BMR enviornment then they have to be in the raw driver form, like INF format. There can be no executables or zipped files in the location that is used to look for drivers, otherwise they will be skipped. Example: Bootability and Driver Injection Location Entries 24. Click Reboot Now. Note: After clicking Reboot Now, the BMR environment will attempt to inject any drivers that are in the locations specified in Step 23. Sometimes a dialog box will appear with "Drivers Missing", if no driver locations are presented. Click OK and manually reboot the target machine.
Example: Reboot the Target Machine Example: Drivers Missing 26. Make sure to set the correct drive to boot off of in the BIOS and then boot the computer, the USB Flash drive used to boot off of should be unplugged prior to boot time as well. 27. After the machine boots for the first time, it will checkdisk and then reboot again. Note: After checking that the device is booting to the correct disk in the BIOS and there are issues booting the newly imaged Production Machine, please attempt an HIR and Bootability Configuration Check with the ShadowProtect ISO.