How Do I ghost Servers with RAID and SAN Drives

[d_mc_alister]

Hello

I am an IT Administrator using Symantec Ghost Version 7.0.0.243

I want to be able to ghost all our servers and I am having to use the
Unicasting Method over a Network then connect to a Multicasting session
on the Ghost Server. I have several Dell Servers which have a
combination of RAID 1 + 0 and RAID 5 on them consisting of 2 Dynamic
Volumes and another Dynamic SAN Volume. My first issue is that my
version of Ghost does not support Disk Ghosting - only partition with
Dynamic Disks. Can someone please advise how I would go about taking
ghost images of these partitions and what is the process of loading
them back onto the Server in the event of a disaster.

Im slightly confused about the reloading process because when I choose
the Partition to reload I must also select a Disk Number and Partition
Number and Im a bit confused about it all. I would be alright if Ghost
would treat every physical disk as one but as it doesn't do this I am
confused about how to Ghost each seperate partition and in what
sequence to reload them etc.
I also have several servers which have a combination of Dynamic and
Basic Disks with Raid 1 + 0 and 5 - This means that I can ghost the
entire Basic Disk but only ghost each seperate partition on the
Dynamic. Whats the best way to dump an image from these and how do I go
about reloading them onto the server.
Finally, we have several servers with Basic only disks ( 3 volumes )
with RAID 1 + 0 only. If I ghost these using the Disk method, How do I
reload this image onto the server and will the RAID config still be
intact given that I have only ghosted one physical disk.

Overall I am very confused about how to Ghost Servers with RAID and SAN
and if someone could explain the process it would be very much
appreciated.

Thanks

Des

 

[Neteng]

I would not use Ghost as DR of data. You could image the OS partition, then
manually create the other partitions, and restore data from backup. That's
also a lot faster than Ghosting every partition. All of the data (on SAN and
local partitions) should be part of your backup plan and ghosting all them
is'nt necessary.

 

[d_mc_alister]

Thanks Neteng for getting back so soon

This sounds like a good idea but how would I rebuild the RAID
Configuration and SAN configuration in the event of a total disaster -
is this information held in the OS partition? Is it the case that once
I put the OS Partition back on everything will fall back into place?

Also some of our servers have very important applications running on
them that would take some time to reinstall - would it be sensible to
image these too?

The Symantec Ghost Multicast console confuses me a bit! When you choose
to load a partition onto a PC it requires you to specify a drive and
partition number. Where would I get this information for say Drive C: ?

Thanks Again...

 

[Neteng]

How is your RAID setup? Hardware or software?

If you server has enterprise apps, you'll need to ghost that as well, but
that should be on the same partition as the OS. To get the partition number,
you can run something like fdisk and it will show you the partitions. Don't
use FDISK! (stated for reference only) You will need an app that can read
your partitions. Typically with Windows, partition 1 is your system
partition. What ever partition is active is the system partition (unless you
are dual-booting).

 

[d_mc_alister]

Well all the servers have physical disks in them if thats what you mean
so I guess its setup through Hardware. So take for example a server
with 2 physical scsi disks creating a RAID mirror. Say it also has a
SAN Drive . So now say disk 0 has 3 partitions on it C,D & E and the
SAN Drive is F. If I only ghost the OS partition C then how would I
rebuild the server to the original RAID configuration and assigned SAN
Drive F. It strikes me I will only have a Disk with a C Drive on it and
no D,E or F and no RAID setup like before. I wnat to be able to restore
the server using the Ghost image without having to totally rebuild the
server.

Thanks

 

[Neteng]

Do you have a RAID card in the server or do you use the OS to create and
manage your RAID configuration? What do you mean my SAN drives? Are you
using FC to connect to a SAN?