Windows Bare Metal Protection and Recovery
Bare metal technology is used for disaster recovery of protected assets. Use the procedures in this chapter to set up bare metal protection for your Windows assets and to recover failed Windows assets. (To recover the Unitrends appliance itself, see Appliance Disaster Recovery. To set up bare metal protection for assets running other operating systems, see the Bare Metal Protection and Recovery Guide.)
There are two options for hot bare metal recovery (BMR) of Windows agent-based assets: Windows unified BMR (formerly known as integrated BMR) and Windows image-based BMR.
With Windows unified BMR, Unitrends provides Unified Bare Metal™ protection that enables you to perform disaster recovery (DR) right from a file-level or image-level backup. This reduces recovery time, provides additional recovery points, increases on-appliance retention by eliminating the need for bare metal backups, and simplifies the Windows DR process. You perform unified BMR by using the Unified Bare Metal Recovery wizard and standard 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images, eliminating the need to create bare metal ISOs for each protected asset and keep them on-hand in case disaster strikes.
With image-based BMR, you must run bare metal backups and create a separate bare metal ISO for each Windows asset you want to protect. You perform image-based BMR by booting from the asset's bare metal ISO. Image-based BMR can protect older versions of Windows that are not supported by unified BMR.
Note: If you have Windows virtual machines, you can protect them by running host-level backups that use hypervisor snapshots or by installing the Windows agent and running file-level backups. If you are running agent-based file-level backups for a VM, use the hot bare metal procedures in this chapter for disaster recovery. If you are running host-level backups for a VM, see Recovering a virtual machine.
Which bare metal method should I use?
It is recommended to use unified BMR where possible. The following table provides a high-level comparison of unified and image-based hot bare metal recovery. To set up bare metal protection, see the following topics:
| • | Windows unified bare metal recovery |
| • | Windows image-based bare metal recovery |
Note: Unified BMR does not support recovering a Windows 2003 Server to dissimilar hardware. In this case, you must use image-based BMR instead.
|
Item |
Unified BMR |
Image-based BMR |
|---|---|---|
|
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) |
Faster recovery time than with image-based BMR. |
Slower recovery time than with unified BMR. |
|
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) |
More recovery points available since you restore from any eligible file-level or image-level backup. |
Fewer recovery points since you restore from a bare metal backup only. |
|
Recovery types |
Supports physical-to-virtual (P2V), virtual-to-physical (V2P), physical-to-physical (P2P), and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) DR. |
Supports physical-to-virtual (P2V), virtual-to-physical (V2P), physical-to-physical (P2P), and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) DR. |
|
Recovery of Windows Server 2022 |
Yes, recovering Windows Server 2022 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
No, recovering Windows Server 2022 assets is not supported. |
|
Recovery of Windows Server 2019 |
Yes, recovering Windows Server 2019 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
No, recovering Windows Server 2019 assets is not supported. |
|
Recovery of Windows Server 2016 |
Yes, recovering Windows Server 2016 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
No, recovering Windows Server 2016 assets is not supported. |
|
Dissimilar recovery of Windows Server 2012 |
Yes, recovering Windows Server 2012 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
Yes, recovering Windows Server 2012 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
|
Dissimilar recovery of Windows Vista/Server 2008 |
Yes, recovering Windows Vista/Server 2008 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
Yes, recovering Windows Vista/Server 2008 to identical or dissimilar hardware is supported. |
|
Dissimilar recovery of Windows Server 2003 |
No, recovering Windows Server 2003 to dissimilar hardware is not supported. Recovery to identical hardware is supported. |
Yes, recovering Windows Server 2003 to dissimilar hardware is supported for some distributions. See the Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix for details. Recovery to identical hardware is supported. |
|
Dissimilar recovery of Windows XP |
No, recovering Windows XP to dissimilar hardware is not supported. Recovery to identical hardware is supported. |
No, recovering Windows XP to dissimilar hardware is not supported. Recovery to identical hardware is supported. |
|
On-appliance retention |
More on-appliance retention due to eliminating bare metal backups. |
Less on-appliance retention due to bare metal backup storage. |
|
ISO image/boot disk |
Standard 32-bit and 64-bit ISO images used for most Windows assets; available on the Unitrends appliance. |
Separate ISO required for each Windows asset; ISOs must be created manually with the Unitrends bare metal agent. |
|
Bare Metal Interface |
Simplified wizard interface enables DR to the desired point-in-time using a single process, decreasing overall recovery time. Leverages WinPE 10.0 for all Windows assets. |
Two dialog-based interfaces (one WinPE 1.5 for older assets, one WinPE 2.0 for newer assets). Cannot perform DR in a single process. |
|
Target disk size |
For file-level backups, supports recovery of original Windows asset to a smaller disk size. (For details, see Prerequisites for file-level backups.) For image-level backups, must recover to a disk of an equal or greater size than that of the original asset. (For details, see Prerequisites for image-level backups.) |
Must recover to a disk of an equal or greater size than that of the original asset. |
|
UEFI-based assets |
Supports recovery of UEFI-based assets. |
Cannot recover UEFI-based assets. |
|
GPT-partitioned assets |
Supports recovery of GPT-partitioned assets. |
Cannot recover GPT-partitioned assets. |