How to Clone / Ghost / backup 1750 with PERC4DI

This is not an easy task try looking at the following info http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1999010613522725&src=w

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2600 here with a PERC 4/Di card in it, and (worryingly) hadn't seen the Symantec post about this being a risky affair!

I created a DOS boot disk from Ghost 2003 (not even the Corporate Edition, just plain old Norton Ghost 2003) and have successfully cloned and restored the RAID-5 array many times. I didn't need to load any ASPI drivers, it just saw the partitions and works fine.

Now I'm worried that something will go horribly wrong with my setup...

Regards

Nick

 

I can't say I have tested this myself to see if it works, but the link I posted before from Symantec does not make it sound like they are even sure if it will always work.  By chance that you have successfully cloned the image, I would not count on that as your only source of a backup and if possible I would try to restore it in a test lab.

Adamcnsao & Nick,

Thanks so very very much for responding and for the information shared...

I've looked at the link Adamcnsao provided briefly and will look at it in more detail later today once i arrive at work...

Nick, I'm very much interested in what you did...

I don't have a raid-5 array, i'm simply using my disks as two separate single disks ( not concated, striped or mirrored )...

You mentioned you cloned a raid-5 array and restored it many times using ghost...

Could you elaborate a bit more...

I'm still learning how to use these 1750's and I'd like to ask you a few more questions

Is the raid-5 array that you're speaking about used as your boot disks or is it a data disks

In otherwords, is the raid-5 array that you backed up the same array that's used to boot the system? or to simpy store data on?

What operating system do you have on your power edge 2600?

I have three 1750's each with 2 disks each

I've configured the systems so that the disk are seen as single scsi's...

I'm going to simply try and see if I can clone them today, 1.22.04, thursday...

Both of the responses i received from both of you are very encouraging...

Thanks again very very much in advance...

-jjss

Well bearing in mind what Adam said - and that has got me worried...

Do you think it's safe to assume that if I was able to make the image, and restore it successfully, then all is probably well? The server boots, no errors appear in the event log and it seems fine. Part of me is worrying (probably unnecessarily) that Ghost has written the data to the disks correctly, i.e. without the ASPI RAID driver did it know how to map the data back to the disks. I'm sure that this is handled by the RAID controller, but I'm still a bit unsure.

I'm going to find the DOS Perc 4/Di drivers and put together a Ghost boot-disk that uses these, and see if it behaves any differently. But, heck - perhaps I'm worrying over nothing. I do remember reading in one of these forums that the PERC controller is useable by DOS, so perhaps Ghost is just "seeing" the disk because of this feature of the card...

Anyway, on to your questions:

1) Is the raid-5 array that you're speaking about used as your boot disks or is it a data disks.

In otherwords, is the raid-5 array that you backed up the same array that's used to boot the system? or to simpy store data on?

Yes it is the boot device. I have 6 x 73 GB disks in the server, which I have made into a single RAID-5 array. This is then partitioned into three primary partitions: 1 x 32MB (Utility), 1 x 20GB (Windows OS), 1 x 300+ GB (Data).

Ghost 2003 has the ability to write to NTFS partitions as well as to read from then. I haven't been using Ghost to guard against system failure, but more as a means of undoing problems that I encounter as I set up the server.

Therefore, I installed the OS (Windows 2000 Advanced Server) applied SP4 and then booted a floppy disk containing Ghost, and dumped the image of the OS Partition into a directory that I'd created in the data partition.

I then installed some applications, and if all went well, made another image. If one of the applications started to cause problems, then I'd restore the old image from the data partition over the OS partition and start again.

This way, I now have a "perfectly" set up server with no errors in the event-log and all seems well!

I will now dump these images onto a DVD/CD-ROM/Tape in case I do have a system failure in the future.

2) What operating system do you have on your power edge 2600?

It's Windows 2000 Advanced Server. I'm using Ghost 2003, running from a disketter, made using the application. This is essentially just a PC DOS boot disk, with a mouse driver and the GHOST.EXE file on it.

Hope that's useful.

Regards

Nick

Nick,

So far so good...

I have a dell poweredge 1750 with two drives

ID 0 is primary boot drive

ID 1 isn't being used

I've just finished successfully ghosting one of the 1750's i have...

I configured the raid controller to make ID 1 visible

I then booted off of the ghost diskette as you mentioned and was able to clone ID 0 to ID1

I removed ID0 and was able to boot off of ID1 ( left it in it's slot )

I shutdown system, moved ID 1 to ID 0's slot and was able to boot off the cloned drive again

In one of the instances, i had to reconfigure the RAID controller to let it know that I had only one

drive and also which drive it should boot off of...

Thanks again, nick for sharing all the info...

I'm going to try and clone my Active directory Primary server with DNS, DHCP, etc...

Hope all goes well...

But really, thanks a million...

 

Well,

Once again, I want to thank everyone...

I've successfully cloned a W2K Advance Server Active Directory Member server running DNS, DHCP, WINS, etc...

It's amazing that it takes so little time to clone the whole disk ( data )...  It took me about 4/5 hours to configure my system from scratch...   I was able to clone it in approximately 1.5 to 2 minutes ( 1.5GB ) of data...

In fact, instead of cloning disk to disk, I'm thinking of simply cloning the disk ID 0  to an image file on disk ID 1, that way I'll be able to store lots of images / changes / configurations...  I haven't tried restoring from an image, but it shouldn't be an issue seeing that I can clone disk to disk

I've cloned my primary ( 1st Active Directory W2k Advance Server ) too...

I'm going to install linux on the next ( 3rd ) 1750, setup nis, dns, ssh, sudo, etc.. and see how it works... after cloning...

For those who do not use ghost very much or who aren't concerned with making backups in case of a disaster or simply for the purpose of undoing a change that recked your system...  This is simply wonderful that ghost " RECOGNIZED " the and saw the drives...  so often ghost cannot see scsi drives through raid controllers and symantec won't help you if it doesn't

One of the dell representatives was also instrumental in helping me get this going...

His name is Mark A....   This Mark A, from dell simply happen to see one of the posts or this post I did and sent me a message...  What's impressive is the fact that even though he shared with me that dell doesn't " officially " support third party software, he provided me with some very helpful tips / suggestions and links...

I'm so very very happy... Now I don't have to worry about losing any data and I don't have to worry about the time it would have taken to restore from a tape drive or a backup done by microsoft to a disk ( which I'm not sure would work anyway on active directory )...

-JJSS

I was using Ghost 2003 personal

JJSS,

Congratulations on your success! One question: were you using Ghost 2003 Personal, or Ghost 8.0 Corporate?

Thanks,

Jonas

jonas (at) colorweb (p) dk