Linux recovery of Windows workstations - using baremetal recovery
 

Is there anything that will let me backup Windows Workstations to Linux, even if it has to be commercial usage. I am currently using a Windows 2003 server and BESR 8 and would like to make this box disappear and replace it with SLES 10. Can Zenworks do this ? Amanda ?

mondo rescue?
 

hi how about mondo rescue?

see more here.

http://ovigia.wordpress.com/2008/10/...enrascar-tudo/

rik

It says it backs up Linux workstations, not Windows.

Bacula
 

Try Bacula (http://bacula.org/). It backs up about every OS you desire. The down side is that it's so capable and flexible it takes some work to get it set up.

Timothy

I could care less about the effort it takes to set it up. Once you have the procedure down and you take good notes, it is a breeze after that. The only thing I wonder though is that Bacula cannot do a bare metal of the Windows host can it ?

Acronis has a Linux version of its software; it does baremetal and is quite reliable.

Ahhh, may be an option.

I'd say Acronis as well - since you are looking for a bare metal solution.

now if you kept standard images of your machines to handle the bare metal restore portion and just backed up the data you would have more options.

I would highly recommend Bacula.

I have Bacula in one of my clients and it works great. I am using it with virtual tapes so the backups all go to external USB-mounted disks. We have successfully recovered lost/deleted files many times and with newer Windows systems it will use VSS as well to speed things up.

Do you know if it does bare metal at all ?

Bacula Windows bare metal recovery
http://wiki.bacula.org/doku.php?id=w...metal_recovery

Well I am guessing that Windows XP would not be much if any different than those Windows Server 2003 instructions. I have 4 days off so it sounds like I may try all of this in ESXi server as a virtual machine.

ESXi.. vmware..
have you looked at vmware converter ?

supposedly it can take a running windows machine and create a vmware image from it.
then supposedly you can take that vmware image and convert it back to a physical machine..

http://www.vmware.com/support/v2p/index.html

I normally will run ESXi when I am running test machines but in the end it will probably be SLES 10 and XEN. I am eagerly waiting on the next SLES release as it is supposed to have XEN 3.3

I always use partimage, great program comes with the SystemRescueCD which also has a gentoo kernel on it, which you automatically boot into.

Partimage basically makes images of all of your partitions. (At least if you tell the program to do that). Make sure you don't forget to save the partition table if you'll change it! Otherwise you won't be able to put the images back!

It works also for backing up windows.
It's very easy to use.

The cd comes also with a windows password cracking tool for windows password recovery. Haven't used that program yet though.