Automating Bare Metal Restores
Hi, we have an environment which often requires one of our servers be cloned to a separate server. All of our servers are physical hardware, no virtual machines. What I am wondering is whether we can automate our tasks with some type of a pre and post restore script similar to a Red Hat kickstart where you can define things that should be done before the restore and other things which must take place after the restore.
For example, I would like to script the sfdisk partitioning, lvm volume creation and partition formatting (which may or may not be required come to think of it) before the restore kicks off, then once the restore is completed I would like to have grub-install install the mbr to the first disk and update the hosts file and ifcfg-eth* files and some other similar post restore tasks which must be done manually according to our current procedure.
We have looked into other solutions which offer this so I figured it may be something Acronis can do, we just need to find out how.
Thank you.
Thanks, I began following your instructions but I must have done something wrong because when I try to do a restore with the custom disk I get an error that says "The license is invalid. The recovery task will fail." Our license is valid and it works fine with the bootable media. Any idea what I could have done wrong?
Thank you.
Hi
I've checked the instructions (done all steps) - everything is working (backup, recovery).
Did you copy "agent_ramdisk64.dat" into "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Acronis\BackupAndRecoveryAgent - on a 64 bit Windows machine" and create bootable media using Media Builder on that machine?
Anyway, I can give you my "abr64ram.dat" file which already has "autostart" file. You will just need to copy it to USB root folder and put your "autostart.sh" on the USB root.
Ok, I will give that a try. Where can I obtain the dat file.
I did copy our agent_ramdisk64.dat file to the appropriate folder and then copies the one from the output folder into its place. I burned this onto a cd, not usb. Could that be my problem? Also, could the kernel append parameters be what is causing the license error? I have this on my append line:
append initrd=agent_ramdisk64.dat /s mbcrcs=on vga=0x316 quiet media_for_linux
Also if you could please point me towards a reference for what these options mean. I copied them from a source I found on google on how to make a custom acronis cd.
Thank you.
> Could that be my problem? Also, could the kernel append parameters be what is causing the license error?
CD and kernel parameters should not be a problem.
> Also if you could please point me towards a reference for what these options mean. I copied them from a source I found on google on how to make a custom acronis cd.
As far as I know, to create custom CD you should not change kernel parameters.
Ok, thank you. I will try this with your dat file and let you know if it works.
Thank you.
I think the error is in "append initrd=agent_ramdisk64.dat" - this means that the wrong dat file will be used. Just avoid adding any custom (found over internet) kernel parameters (unless you know what they are intended for).