Following on from an earlier blog post where I had tested the restore of my SBS 2008 to alternate hardware, on Saturday I restored my SBS 2008 server to an ML 110 G5. Here’s the process I’ve used to transfer SBS 2008 from an ML110 G4 to an ML110 G5.
- Ensure that backups have been running fine for the past few days. I did this by going into the SBS 2008 console and selecting the Backup & Shared Folders tab and then select “Restore a backup”. Here you will see the list of all the backups for this server. I reviewed the last few backups and decided all was good.
- I disconnected the SBS 2008/ML110 G4 server from the network and then used the SBS 2008 console to perform a “Backup Now” operation. This ensures that I have everything I need before I start.
- Once the backup was complete, I left the old server running so I could easily see anything I needed to in event of emergency.
- I setup the ML 110 G5 on the bench with no network connection.
- I inserted the SBS 2008 DVD into the DVD drive and booted up without the USB backup drive connected.
- Select the correct Language and Country options and Next
- Select “Repair Your Computer”
- Connected my USB backup drive to the server
- Select “Complete PC Restore” and it scanned the USB Hard Drive for the backup images. It found the most recent backup and displayed it as 2:29pm on 20th November when in fact I had backed it up at 9:29AM on 21st November. Thats ok – it also displayed the timezone information which allowed me to see that this was the right backup. I selected that backup and Next.
- SBS 2008 doesn’t have the RAID controller drivers for the ML 110 G5 inbuilt so I had to use the Add Drivers button to add the drivers. I had to however plug in the USB stick with the RAID drivers on them first which I did. I selected the right drivers and hit Next.
- I ticked the box to confirm that I wanted to erase the drives and proceed with the restore. It’s 9:50am now and the restore is proceeding… time to wait.
- 12:20pm – just on 2.5 hours since the restore started, it’s finished and rebooting. Remove the USB devices while it’s rebooting and take out the SBS 2008 DVD or it might try to boot from that again.
- I connected a loopback adapter to the servers NIC so that it had a network interface to bind too.
- Logged in to the server and it starts to ask for drivers… I’ve elected to say “Ask me later” as I want to install all the drivers myself first up and then go from there.
- I copied the folder I prepared earlier with all the drivers downloaded from the HP website to the desktop of the ML110 G5. I then set about installing them all beginning with the ML110 G5 Chipset drivers first, RAID Drivers second, and then the Network Card and Video drivers.
- I connected the network cable to the server and then opened the SBS 2008 Console and ran the “Connect to the Internet” wizard and used it to confirm and fix my servers IP address as it was before.
- Reboot and check the servers event logs – all looks great. Test everything and connect a new backup drive and we’re done.
- Total time around 3 hours or so. Not bad using the inbuilt tools that come with SBS 2008.
Hardware Specs of my new server
HP Proliant ML 110 G5
Pentium E2160 Dual Core CPU @ 1.8Ghz
8GB RAM – yes 8GB is enough for my requirements. I’ve in fact run it on 4GB on the old server without an issue as well.
2 x 500G Drives in Hardware RAID 1 Array – this is where SBS 2008, Exchange and all key user data is stored – this is what I restored using the process above.
2 x 1.5TB Drives in Software RAID 0 Array (the HP ML110 G5 can’t handle more than 2TB as a logical volume). This is my data dump of ISO files, drivers etc that are not so critical. I use DFS-R to have this data also stored on another server in the network in case we have a drive failure on this server. After the restore, I used DFS-R to replicate the information back over to this server.
Hi,
I have the same server but i am not able to restore my backup, i got errors that the disk defined in bios is to small after loading the raid driver;
The raid array is 750gb and ok, the raid controller is also the first boot option but does not work….
Did you have an idea?
thx,
alex
Alex,
I’ve seen that error myself on other systems. In those systems I had multiple drives installed which seemed to cause it to freak out. I removed all but the drive I wanted to install SBS 2008 to and then it performed without an issue. Try that and let me know please.
Wayne
Very helpful information as I’m doing a restore today because of a failed RAID controller on a SBS 2008
Hi Alex,
Great post, thanks for taking the time to detail a working restore.
Could you clarify the volume setup that you used on the RAID 1 drives i.e. did you configure it with a single C: volume, or did the restore work ok with 2 or more volumes?
Preparing for an SBS 2003 to 2008 in a week and a bit, the new machine has capacity for 4 drives but it seems like 2 drives in RAID 1 config for the mission critical bits would be best for DR. Would ideally put data on a second logical volume though, to minimise the risk to the system volume if data/files were to fill up remaining space, but not yet had time to test a restore with more than one volume.
Much appreciated,
Chris
Hi Chris – not sure who Alex is but anyway 🙂
Mirrored drives are for me – the minimum I use for DR – or a live server for that matter.
Place your C: onto those drives. In fact I’m considering leaving 5 GB of “empty” space at the end of all my partitions when using the inbuild W2008/SBS2008 backup so that I can restore them to “similar but smaller” drives – this is a key limitation in the Windows Backup that it cannot restore to smaller drives.
Wayne (aka Alex) 🙂
Hi Al..Wayne,
Sorry, was re-reading Alex’s post when I started typing – obviously been staring at this a bit long today! :-S
That’s an excellent point, a lot of backup software used to have the same limitation, but I’ve gotten out of the habit – thanks for the reminder, I’ll be implementing that on the new SBS 08! No doubt attributed to the block-level backup methodology that also rid us of that pesky ability to back up individual files.
Have you completed the restore when there’s only a C: volume on the mirrored array, or did you manage to complete it happily when there’s an additional volume (eg E: for data) on the same physical disks?
What I’m getting at is since, from what you’re saying in post 2, WSB seems to have an issue when seeing more than 1 “physical” disk during a BM restore, I assume moving SBS data (Exchange Storage Groups, Redirected Documents etc) via the SBS Console to a volume on the second array would cause the same issue Alex was getting when attempting to restore the server, so splitting the original mirrored array into C: and E: volumes would be the preferred second option. As a standard practice I tend to store growing data (Exchange, SQL Server DBs, file shares) on a volume other than C: to prevent the OS actually running out of working storage. I’m wondering if two volumes would work fine when performaing a BM restore, as there is only one “physical” disk involved.
Hope that makes sense.
Thanks Wayne 🙂
Hi Wayne,
Just to add to the above for anyone else who’s wondering, the Bare-Metal restore of SBS went absolutely fine with 2 volumes on the same virtual/”virtual” disk (the one in inverted commas is a test on drives on a hardware RAID card, in RAID 1 config).
The only issue to watch for is that when you plug in the disk containing the backup it must be on the root of the drive, if it’s in a subfolder use another machine to move the backup you want to restore to the root of the drive (ie so you’ve got [drive letter]:\WindowsImageBackup).
In light of your testing above, I’ve decided to stick to one physical disk/array, but separate logical volumes on that disk do not affect the restore.
Hope that helps someone, a great backup tool with a few annoying limitations.
Thanks again for your help.
Regards,
Chris
Thanks Chris for letting me know. If you have any extra notes, feel free to email them to me and we can work together on a proper blog post (with credit to yourself) so that others may benefit too.
Great post Wayne!
I did a similar hardware upgrade and here is my experience.
A. Old server : DL380 G5; 2 x 146GB SAS in RAID 1 for OS & 3 x 300GB SAS in RAI 5 for data.
SBS2008 Std with all recent Windows SP.
B. New server : DL380 G6, reusing the 5 old SAS drives.
At the end, the upgrade process was fairly simple
Remove the 5 drives from the old server
Insert them in the new server. I made sure they were inserted in the same order.
Boot new server
Got the Login prompt. Was able to login. No need to use the SBS restore as per Wayne’s post. That was so easy!
A few drivers were missing. Ran HP Smart Update Manager
Rebooted … et voila the server is running
Oh yes, still need to configure the network cards by
1. disabling the NICs that the server doesn’t use >>> see Gotcha section below
2. Set IP address in the new LAN NIC
3. running the “Connect to the Internet” wizard.
Server up and running. No errors in the event logs, Internet connected, Exchange running.
Mind you, the last 3 steps took me 8 hours to finish…!!!
A couple of gotchas!
1. The DL380 G6 base version comes with a P610i onboard RAID contronller with no memory.
This meant that it could only create RAID 1 and could not create a RAID 5. Adding a 256MB add on module solved that problem … a couple of days later. (A little trick I learned today): this memory upgrade was a quarter of the price if bought as a spare part from HP rather than as a new part from my local distributor … but delivery time can be up to 10 days from HP compared to 1 day from local supplier.
2. I initially installed some drivers manually. After reboot, the server stayed for ever on “Applying computer settings”, never showing he loggon screen. Restarting in Safe was OK. Starting using the Last Known Good Configuration fixed the problem. I then ran the HP Smart Update Manager which installed all the drivers required for this server.
3. There was left over information in the registry about the previous NICs. Tryied to clean up the registry but the “Connect to the Internet” wizard did not work properly. This took 5 hours as I did not know how to fix it. At the end someone on the http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/smallbusinessserver/ forum pointed me in the right direction. The solution was:
Open a command prompt with Run as an Administrator,
type: SET DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1
then type: devmgmt.msc
In the View menu, choose Show Hidden Devices
Now you are able to see the not present devices and can uninstall or remove them
Good luck!
Just an update from me – I also am going through a windows backup restore on a ML110 G5 server with onboard B110i RAID.
Upon ‘Load Drivers’ in the SBS 2008 DVD system restore process I used the following drivers (extracted on a USB mem stick):
HP file:
HP ProLiant Smart Array Embedded SATA RAID Controller Driver for Windows 2003/2008 x64 Editions
Version: 6.14.0.64 (5 Oct 2010)
File name: cp013026.exe (743 KB)
Link to file:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=3958193&prodNameId=3958194&swEnvOID=1113&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-fc7b4e54c0e7433abe2f8801d5
Hope this helps.
many cake
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