I have just installed SLES 9 on an IBM Blade and want to backup or create an image before I turn it over to the users.

Is there a fast and easy way to do something like this?

We are using netbackup 5.0MP5 and have been told that we need to install 6.5 before we can use the Tape Drive. So, need to do something in the interim so that the users can start working on the SLES Servers.

Hi sierra495, Welcome to lq. This might help, depends on what devices or network access you have available.
Good luck. ;-)

Hi Sierra495,

We regularly build (and rebuild) IBM blades in blade centres. We use 2 methods for imaging:
*In the 'factory' we use a DRBL (a Linux distro / tool) server to roll out new images. It has the advantage of being able to roll out multiple operating systems in parallel. We regularly roll out operating systems to 4 blades in parallel in under 4 minutes.
*When we ship to a customer site we supply the client with a Suse rescue disk and a previously built dd copy of the hard drive on local SAN storage. The Suse rescue disk is capable of discovering and mounting the Fibre attached SAN and allowing you to dd the hard drive image back - ideal when the DRBL server is not availale. This option of course is only any good if you have storage accessible to the Suse rescue disk.

Regards

DylanTS

It's expensive and proprietary, but symantec ghost can image ext2 and 3 drives.

I used to blindly use Ghost - for years. Then I had a Linux install blow up, and went to restore the image and it failed on the Ext3 partition.

I have since switched, and am a beta tester for Acronis True Image (not free). It has never failed me and will operate either from a boot CD or inside Windoze. It can also do individual file restores from an image. It will image to almost anything including network. Highly recommended.

Not to hijack the thread, but...

I've heard really good things about acronis, so I downloaded their enterprise product to try out. I work at a software training company and need to be able to deploy an image to a lab (10-20 computers) quickly and regularly. The clients also have to reconfigure automatically based on mac address. (I.e. Mac 00-01-6e-2b-33-ee has an image deployed to it. The image is from a computer named RM3, but the destination computer's name is 3-2. After deployment, the imaging software needs to re-configure the computer name back to 3-2)
Ghost server and Altiris both do this, but Acronis Enterprise seemed to be more of a network backup solution. Am I wrong? Is there a quick and easy deployment guide? Do I not need the enterprise edition at all?

Anything you can share would be great.

We use Acronis True Image Home at the office for disaster planning and recovery. We are in a hurricane prone area. We use two methods - one is a direct connection to an external USB drive, and the other is through the network to an NAS drive. Both work flawlessly. At home I use direct backup to an external USB drive.

Sounds like for your application, imaging with True Image Home to either an external USB or NAS drive would do the job for you quickly.

Have you checked clonezilla? If you have a server you can connect to using ssh to copy the images from/to, you are in business. That is all that is required from the server... besides enough disk space, that is. BTW, clonezilla only copies the disk space that was actually used in each partition. It is also nice when you can backup a, say, windows laptop in a hotel in LA to a Linux/Solaris box in FL through the hotel's wireless network through a ssh tunnel.