Backup and Recovery Strategies

When you receive a GV STRATUS server from the factory, the machine has a generic image on the E: drive. The generic image is not specific to the individual machine. It is generic for all machines of that type. Some servers also have a system-specific image on the E: drive.

You receive a recovery CD with your server. This recovery CD does not contain a disk image. Rather, the recovery CD is bootable and contains the Acronis True Image software necessary to create and restore a disk image.

After your server is installed, configured, and running in your system environment, you should create new recovery disk images for the machine to capture settings changed from default. These “first birthday” images are the baseline recovery image for the machine in its life in your facility. You should likewise create new recovery disk images after completing any process that changes system software or data, such as a software upgrade. In this way you retain the ability to restore to a recent “last known good” state.

For the highest degree of safety, you should create a set of disk image recovery CDs, in addition to storing disk images on the E: partition. Since system drives are RAID protected, in most failure cases the disk images on the E: partition will still be accessible. But in the unlikely even of a catastrophic failure whereby you lose the entire RAID protected system drive, you can use your disk image recovery CDs to restore the system.

For image restore procedures, refer to related topics in this Topic Library.