Implementing Windows unified bare metal protection

For best results, it is recommended that you plan your strategy for disaster recovery before an asset fails. Following is a high-level overview of the steps you must complete to implement unified bare metal protection for your Windows assets. It identifies steps to complete before and after an asset fails.

Perform the following before an asset fails

Step 1: Check the Windows asset to determine the following:

● Its operating system version and whether it is 32-bit or 64-bit. For instructions, see the Microsoft document Which Windows operating system am I running? (Recovery of image-level backups is supported for 64-bit assets only.)

● Its firmware interface type (BIOS or UEFI). Check this by viewing the system information or volumes on the Windows machine.

Step 2: Review the Prerequisites for Windows unified bare metal recovery to verify that the operating system is supported and the asset meets all requirements.

Step 3: Run file-level or image-level backups that include all critical system information. (For details see An eligible file-level backup or An eligible image-level backup.)

Step 4: (Optional/recommended) Perform a test recovery using the procedures in Performing unified bare metal recovery.

To recover a failed asset

Step 5: Perform unified bare metal recovery (BMR) using the procedures in Performing unified bare metal recovery.

Prerequisites for Windows unified bare metal recovery

Consider the prerequisites for unified BMR as you plan your disaster recovery strategy. For Windows operating systems not supported by unified BMR, see Windows image-based bare metal recovery.

Requirements differ by backup type. See these topics for details:

Prerequisites for file-level backups

The following requirements must be met to recover from a file-level backup.

Requirement	Description
Operating systems	Recovery to identical hardware and virtual machines is supported for the client operating systems listed below. (Additional version limitations apply. See the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix for details.) Recovery to dissimilar hardware is NOT supported for XP and is supported for the others in this list. ● Windows XP, 32-bit and 64-bit (SP2 and later) ● Windows Vista, 32-bit and 64-bit (SP2) ● Windows 7, 32-bit and 64-bit ● Windows 8, 32-bit and 64-bit ● Windows 8.1, 32-bit and 64-bit ● Windows 10, 64-bit ● Windows 11, 64-bit Recovery to identical hardware and virtual machines is supported for the server operating systems listed below. (Additional version limitations apply. See the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix for details.) Recovery to dissimilar hardware is NOT supported for 2003/2003 R2 and is supported for the others in this list. ● Windows 2003, 32-bit and 64-bit (SP2) ● Windows 2003 R2, 32-bit and 64-bit ● Windows Small Business Server 2003 and later, 32-bit and 64-bit ● Windows 2008, 32-bit and 64-bit ● Windows 2008 R2, 64-bit ● Windows 2012, 64-bit ● Windows 2012 R2, 64-bit ● Windows 2016, 64-bit ● Windows 2019, 64-bit ● Windows 2022, 64-bit
An eligible file-level backup	The backup used for recovery must meet these requirements: ● It is successful. ● It is a full, differential, or incremental file-level backup that contains disk metadata (known as the asset's system state). Disk metadata is captured in file-level backups unless you have opted to exclude critical volumes or to exclude the system state. To check whether the system state is included in a backup, run the Backup History report and select the backup in the list. In the Backup Status: Report Entry dialog, check the Output area for System State Excluded or Included. If system state was excluded, you need to modify the backup job to include all critical volumes to create a backup that can be used for unified BMR. For details, see To create a file-level backup job.
Unified BMR ISO images	For the recovery, you must use the 32-bit or 64-bit unified BMR ISO image provided on the your Unitrends appliance. The ISOs contain WinPE (a minimal version of Windows used for installations) and the Unitrends Unified Bare Metal Recovery wizard that guides you through the recovery. To prepare for DR, it is recommended that you do the following: ● Create bootable CDs of these ISOs and store them in a safe place (so that you can quickly recover to a physical machine target). ● Save the ISOs to your hypervisor (so you can quickly recover to a virtual machine target). For details, see Step 1: Access the unified bare metal recovery ISO image.
Firmware interface type	Supported for BIOS- and UEFI-based assets. The firmware interface type (BIOS or UEFI) of the recovery target machine must match that of the failed asset.
Disk configuration	● GPT disks are supported. ● Dynamic disks are not supported. ● iSCSI disks are not supported. Recover the critical (non-iSCSI) volumes as described in . Once the critical volumes have been restored, recover data on the iSCSI volumes as described in Recovering File-level Backups.
Software RAID volumes	Software RAID configurations are not supported.
Network adapter	Wireless network adapters cannot be used for the recovery.
Drivers	Drivers needed for unified BMR are determined by the operating system of the asset you are recovering and the operating system and hardware of the target recovery machine. You might need to add drivers during different stages of the recovery. ● Loading WinPE drivers for unified bare metal recovery — The Unified BMR wizard uses WinPE 10.0 for the recovery. WinPE 10.0 is based on Windows 11 or Server 2022. If WinPE 10.0 cannot detect a network adapter or storage disks, you must load Windows 11 or Server 2022 drivers into WinPE during recovery. ● Injecting drivers into the recovered operating system — After the critical volumes have been recovered, you must inject drivers into the recovered operating system if you are recovering to dissimilar hardware or to a virtual machine. ● If recovering to a physical machine, required drivers vary by hardware and operating system. It is recommended that you verify whether the operating system of the asset you are recovering requires additional drivers to run on the hardware of the recovery target machine before you begin the recovery. ● If recovering to a virtual machine, you must inject ESX, Hyper-V, or XenServer guest storage drivers, depending upon your virtual environment. These drivers are included in the unified BMR ISO image.
Processor features on the recovery target	WinPE requires that these processor features are enabled on the recovery target machine: NX, PAE, and SSE2. You might need to enable these features on the recovery target machine before booting from the ISO image. For instructions, see Error 0x0000005D (Unsupported Processor) when booting Release 7.4 Integrated Bare Metal restore media. Machines that do not have these processor features cannot be used for the recovery.
Disk space on recovery target	Make sure the target machine has enough disk space for the recovery. To recover from a file-level backup, adhere to these requirements: ● The recovery target can have smaller disks than the failed asset, but the recovery fails if the disks do not have enough space for the data on the critical volumes. ● After an asset has failed, there is no way to determine the size of its critical volumes. You can determine the size of an asset’s full backup by viewing the backup details in the Backup History report. However, the size of the critical volumes will be smaller than the full backup if it also contains non-critical volumes. If you are unsure about the size of the critical volumes, it is recommended that you recover to destination disks that are the same size as the original disks or larger. ● If you are recovering to new disks, any existing data on the destination disks is overwritten or deleted during the recovery, even if the disks have more than enough space. Before performing a recovery, make sure you have additional copies of any data on the destination disks. ● If you are recovering to the original disk, only the recovered volumes are overwritten. Other volumes on the original disk are not impacted by the recovery.
Supported recovery scenarios	Use the procedures in Performing unified bare metal recovery for the following recovery scenarios: ● Recover to the same physical hardware as the failed asset. ● Recover a failed physical asset to dissimilar hardware. Supported for Windows Vista/Server 2008 and higher. ● Recover a failed physical asset to dissimilar hardware with fewer disks. Supported for Windows Vista/Server 2008 and higher. ● Recover a failed physical asset to hardware with smaller or larger disks. ● Recover a failed asset BIOS/MBR configuration to a dissimilar BIOS/MBR configuration. Supported for Windows Vista/Server 2008 and higher. ● Recover a failed asset UEFI/GPT configuration to a dissimilar UEFI/GPT configuration. Supported for Windows Vista/Server 2008 and higher. ● Recover multi-boot configured BIOS servers. ● Recover a failed physical asset to a virtual machine (VM). See Recovery to a VM is supported for these virtual hosts: below for supported virtual hosts. ● Recover a failed VM from a file-level backup to a VM or to a physical asset: ● If you have opted to protect a VM by installing the Windows agent and running file-level backups, you can recover the failed VM by using unified BMR. ● Recovering a VM to a physical asset is supported for Windows 7/ Server 2008 R2 and higher. ● Recovering a VM to a VM is supported for the hosts listed below in Recovery to a VM is supported for these virtual hosts:. If you are also protecting the VM with host-level backups, it is easier to recover from the host-level backup as described in Recovering a virtual machine. ● Recovery to a VM is supported for these virtual hosts: ● VMware ESX/ESXi versions 5.0 and higher that are listed in the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. ● All versions of Hyper-V listed in the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. ● All versions of Citrix XenServer listed in the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. The virtual host must support the operating system (OS) of the Windows asset you are recovering. (See the VMware, Microsoft, or Citrix documentation for details. For Hyper-V, see this Microsoft article: Should I create a generation 1 or 2 virtual machine in Hyper-V?) For example, you cannot recover Windows 2016 to ESXi 5.1 or Hyper-V 2008 R2.

Prerequisites for image-level backups

The following requirements must be met to recover from an image-level backup.

Requirement	Description
Operating systems	Recovery to identical physical hardware and virtual machines is supported for the operating systems listed below. Recovery to dissimilar hardware is NOT supported. Supported client operating systems: ● Windows 7 with SP1, 64-bit only ● Windows 8, 64-bit only ● Windows 8.1, 64-bit only ● Windows 10, 64-bit only ● Windows 11, 64-bit only Supported server operating systems: ● Windows 2008 R2 with SP1, 64-bit only ● Windows 2012, 64-bit only ● Windows 2012 R2, 64-bit only ● Windows 2016, 64-bit only ● Windows 2019, 64-bit only ● Windows 2022, 64-bit
An eligible image-level backup	The backup used for recovery must meet these requirements: ● It is successful. ● It is a full or incremental image-level backup that contains all critical system volumes. NOTES ● By default, image-level backups include all system information needed for unified bare metal recovery. If you opt to exclude volumes from backup, use care not to exclude the boot and critical system (OS) volumes. ● The recovered asset is created based on the backup you select. Volumes that were excluded from backup are not recovered. ● When you recover the entire asset, any existing data on the target is overwritten or deleted. Volumes on the target disk that were excluded from backup may also be overwritten. ● For SQL, the master, model, and msdb system databases must also be present in the image-level backup of the Windows asset. (These are included by default. If you want the recovered asset to include a hosted SQL application, use care not to exclude these system databases from the image-level backup.)
Unified BMR ISO image	For the recovery, you must use the 64-bit unified BMR ISO image provided on the your Unitrends appliance. The ISO contains WinPE (a minimal version of Windows used for installations) and the Unitrends Unified Bare Metal Recovery wizard that guides you through the recovery. To prepare for DR, it is recommended that you do the following: ● Create a bootable CD of the ISO and store it in a safe place (so that you can quickly recover to a physical machine target). ● Save the ISO to your hypervisor (so you can quickly recover to a virtual machine target). For details, see Step 1: Access the unified bare metal recovery ISO image.
Firmware interface type	Supported for BIOS- and UEFI-based assets. The firmware interface type (BIOS or UEFI) of the recovery target machine must match that of the failed asset.
Disk configuration	● GPT disks are supported. ● Dynamic disks are not supported. ● iSCSI disks are not supported. Recover the critical (non-iSCSI) volumes as described in . Once the critical volumes have been restored, recover data on the iSCSI volumes as described in Recovering files from Windows image-level backups.
Software RAID volumes	Software RAID configurations are not supported.
Network adapter	Wireless network adapters cannot be used for the recovery.
Drivers	Drivers needed for unified BMR are determined by the operating system and hardware of the asset you are recovering and whether you are recovering to a physical or virtual machine. You might need to add drivers during different stages of the recovery. ● Loading WinPE drivers for unified bare metal recovery — The Unified BMR wizard uses WinPE 10.0 for the recovery. WinPE 10.0 is based on Windows 11 or Server 2022. If WinPE 10.0 cannot detect a network adapter or storage disks, you must load Windows 11 or Server 2022 drivers into WinPE during recovery. ● Recovering to a virtual machine — After the critical drives have been recovered, you must inject ESX, Hyper-V, or XenServer guest storage drivers. These drivers are included in the unified BMR ISO image.
Processor features on the recovery target	WinPE requires that these processor features are enabled on the recovery target machine: NX, PAE, and SSE2. Ensure that these features are enabled on the recovery target machine before booting from the ISO image. For instructions, see Error 0x0000005D (Unsupported Processor) when booting Release 7.4 Integrated Bare Metal restore media. Machines that do not have these processor features cannot be used for the recovery.
Disk space on recovery target	Make sure the target machine has enough disk space for the recovery. To recover from an image-level backup, adhere to these requirements: ● You must recover to destination disks that are the same size as the original disks or larger. Recovery fails if the disk does not have enough space. ● Any existing data on the destination disks is overwritten or deleted during the recovery, even if the disk has more than enough space. Before performing a recovery, make sure you have additional copies of any data on the destination disk. ● Deduplicated volumes - Data is recovered in its non-deduplicated form. Ensure that the target disk has enough capacity to house this non-deduplicated data.
Supported recovery scenarios	Use the procedures in for the following recovery scenarios: ● Recover to the same physical hardware as the failed asset. ● Recover a failed physical asset to a virtual machine (VM). Recovery to a VM is supported for these virtual hosts: ● VMware ESX/ESXi versions 5.0 and higher that are listed in the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. ● All versions of Hyper-V listed in the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. ● All versions of Citrix XenServer listed in the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix. The virtual host must support the operating system (OS) of the Windows asset you are recovering. (See the VMware, Microsoft, or Citrix documentation for details.) For example, you cannot recover Windows 2016 to ESXi 5.1 or Hyper-V 2008 R2.

	Need troubleshooting help? Open the Kaseya Helpdesk.
	Want to talk about it? Head on over to the Community!
	Have an idea for a new feature? Want to learn about upcoming enhancements? Visit the Ideas forum!
	Provide feedback for the Documentation team.