Restoring SBS 2008 Using Windows Backup

Today, after finishing up a test migration from SBS 2003 to SBS 2008, I deleted the SBS 2008 VM from the ESXi server to free up space for a real migration – but first, I used the built-in Windows Backup to make a one-time backup to a shared folder on my workstation via UNC path.

Then I got to thinking: This is as good a time as any to check out restoring SBS 2008, so let’s give it a go.

There are plenty of walkthroughs with screen shots on the web, so I won’t bother with that, I just want to comment on the process and give a brief overview for those who don’t need the screenshots and would rather just go through it with a few pointers.

First, I created a new VM with the same virtual disks, processors, and memory as the original. I suppose these could have been different sizes, as long as they were enough to cover it – but I didn’t test that.

Then, I attached the SBS 2008 DVD ISO image to the VM, set it to boot into the BIOS on first boot, and fired it up. Why did I set it to boot into the BIOS? Well, for two reasons actually. First, the time and date on the freshly created VM is often incorrect. In this case, the time was 1:30pm on the 24th. When I fired up the VM, it thought the time was 9:30pm. 8 hours wrong. SBS gets annoyed about things like that. The second reason was so that I could adjust the boot sequence.

Everything properly adjusted, I rebooted the VM and it started the SBS setup sequence.

At the proper junction, I told it to run a repair. I further told it to restore from backup. Here is where it got a little strange. It wanted me to select an operating system to repair, but there was none. I clicked the Next button and was rewarded with the option to do a Complete Windows PC Restore. Clicked that, and it looked around for a local backup device, didn’t find one. the available buttons were Retry, Cancel. At this point I started to despair, thinking MS had made an assumption about the backup device being local. Still, I clicked the Retry button first (more of the same), then the Cancel button on the third go-round.

The Cancel button turned out to be the right answer, because then there was an option for “Restore from a different backup”. Aha. Now we’re getting somewhere. Clicked the Next button. Was presented with a listof available backups. An empty list.

Man, if I had a lot of customer data and billable time invested in this, I would be on a serious emotional rollercoaster by now. MS could have presented this better. Still, there was a ray of hope: An Advanced button. I clicked it.

In the Advanced screen, there was an option to “Search for a backup on the network”. Bingo. Clicked that, confirmed the security warning, and Windows fired up the network stack.

Windows then prompted me for the location of the backup. I expected some trouble here, because the storage location was a UNC path to a workstation in a different subnet, on an XP machine attached to a non-trusting domain. However, my pessimism was unwarranted. MS got this one right. I was able to specify the UNC path to the machine (I used the IP address because I had no name resolution mechanism in place). It popped up an authentication dialog box and I was able to supply domain credentials, but it failed to connect to the workstation. I tried this a couple of times, just in case I had typed something wrong, but then I realized that I had fired up the VM in a network that had no DHCP server online. Well, that won’t work out really well, will it? I edited the VM settings and swapped it over to the network subnet that did have a DHCP server running, rebooted, and tried again. It worked much better that time. How about that? Anyway, once I got over that little hump, I was able to specify the full path to the storage location, and it found the backup.

From there it was pretty uneventful, which in itself is saying something positive for the process. I went and did some other things while waiting for the restore process to finish. Came back after a while and it was done. Rebooted the machine, and I had a fully functional SBS 2008, complete with users, data, configurations, etc. All was good. Didn’t have to re-activate, didn’t have to reboot to finish installing hardware.

Overall, not a bad process. Way better than loading a complete OS, booting into Directory Services Restore Mode, and restoring the backup right over the top of the freshly loaded OS that took so long to build.

Maybe there’s something to this SBS 2008 and Windows Backup thing.

Update: I ran this again with smaller disks (still larger than the 60gb requirement for SBS2008, but smaller than the original disks by 5gb). Way above the actual data size. It failed. Apparently it can’t resize on the fly, like Symantec Ghost has been able to do since the turn of the century. Sigh. Well, you can’t have everything. I guess this is likely to be a side effect of block level backups. Still, Storagecraft ShadowProtect can do this as of version 3.3, and they’re using the same VSS and block-level backup technology. Their restore operation is way different though.

Tags: backup, ESXi, SBS 2008