Reliable clone / image software

[adtrance]

I'm about to roll out a major HVAC software upgrade on one of our production servers but before I do, I'd like to clone that server entirely just in case the upgrade is not working as intended. I'm looking for a software package that allows me to restore the image exactly as the original and will be up and running as if nothing ever happened.

I've read about Acronis True Image and TeraByte Unlimited Image for Windows but am wary using these products on Server 2003 SP2. Anyone with experience in using a cloning product on Server 2K3SP2 with a similar scenario?

Also, why would I need to spend $999 for Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server -vs- $39 for TeraByte Image for Windows since they both are compatible with Windows Server OS?

 

[sourceninja]

I've used clonezilla on our library card catalog server to image it before a serious upgrade. We tested the restore on a spare server (dell 1750's) and it worked without issue.

 

[VinDSL]

Heh! You beat me to the punch...

I just downloaded the Clonezilla ISO.

I'm gonna attempt a disk-to-disk clone in a few minutes and see how it goes...

 

[VinDSL]

Hrm...

Clonezilla is kind of a kludge - required a lot of dancing on the [Space bar] - but it worked...

I've got 249GB of free space on my Vista HP lappy now, and the 'Disk data transfer rate' subscore went from 4.7 to 5.8

I'm a happy camper!

 

[Evenkeel]

Originally posted by: VinDSL
Hrm...

Clonezilla is kind of a kludge - required a lot of dancing on the [Space bar] - but it worked...

I've got 249GB of free space on my Vista HP lappy now, and the 'Disk data transfer rate' subscore went from 4.7 to 5.8

I'm a happy camper!

I was just about to post my own question on using Clonezilla disk-to-disk, but you beat me to that! I just recently went thru a minor version of hell trying to clone a Vista C: drive, first using Ghost (whch refused to remake the drive into a C: drive), and ultimately ended up doing a Vista Backup image restore using the "Repair" function on the Vista CD. (I know; no one was more surprised than me that Vista was the one that actually saved me.) The whole time I was dealing w/Ghost, I was thinking "Wouldn't a simple command-line cloner be nice?"

And then I just found out about Clonezilla today, and d/l'd it a couple minutes ago. So that I can learn from your efforts, can you elaborate what you mean by "Clonezilla is kind of a kludge - required a lot of dancing on the [Space bar] - but it worked..."?

What was the "kludge" part? I learned from a link on the Clonezilla site to here was that probably the reason Ghost didn't work was "Usually, Windows will not be able to boot, unless you copy, move or restore NTFS to the same partition which starts at the same sector on the same type of disk having the same BIOS legacy cylinder setting as the original partition and disk had." And that another program named "relocntfs" does create a kludge to trick WIndows into thinking it is still booting from all the stuff the previous sentence said.

Does Clonezilla "kludge" the clone like that? Or does it actually do the job correctly? (I just found out about Clonezilla today from an article in PC World, on upgrading the HD in your kaptop--they used Clonezilla to do the clone, and said it worked well.)

Can I assume that if I'm just replacing a failed HD as above, or installing a larger one at a later date, that I don't need to worry about the SID change (and the accompanying programs that change it), since it's all going back in the same machine? (I'm getting out of my element here; I realize Clonezilla is used a lot for large deployments, so forgive my ignorance.)

ANyway, if you could expound on your Clonezilla experience, let me know what to look out for, etc. I'd be a happy camper too.

 

[VinDSL]

Well...

First of all I downloaded the Clonezilla ISO and burned a 'Live' CD - only used like 80MB.

This is pretty standard fare with Linux et al - the same way I installed OpenSUSE and Ubuntu x64 kernels, prior to reverting to Vista HP on my new lappy drive, so no surprise here...

After booting off the Clonezilla Live CD, it would [pause] after every few lines - sort of like the [pause] switch in a MS batch file. So, then I had to hit the [space bar] to make it continue - even though I was NEVER prompted to do same. Sometimes it continued for a few lines, then it [paused] again. Sometimes it would go through a screen or two before [pausing]. Then, all of a sudden, a GUI would pop up in pigeon-english and ask you to pick from 5-6 choices - also in pigeon-english. At other times, choices were made by typing [1, 2, 3, a, b, c], followed by more dancing on the [space bar] after a few mores lines.

After going through all this BS, it indicated it was going to actually do something, followed by 1%, 3%, 10%, 13%, 19%, blah, blah, blah - from CLI of course.

Finally, it asked me if I wanted to make another image or reboot... and that was that...

It was such a 'kludgey' process, I was surprised it actually worked - but it did!

In a way, it was kinda cool having the script pause after a line or two, so you could *see* what's going on in the background - Linux often makes you wonder what just flashed by you... but in another way, it was kind of a major PITA, wondering if you should hit the [space bar] or wait for something to happen.

I dunno... maybe it's because I was doing this on a lappy that was obviously designed with Vista in mind - but other Linux Live CDs just did there thing with no dancing on the [space bar]. So, I have to *think* it's a bug or something. I've read comments by other ppl having to "battle" with Clonezilla as well...

Anyway, that's what I mean about it being a "kludge"... kapeesh?

Don't get me wrong - I'll continue playing around with it. Maybe it's just something I'm doing wrong - but really - I think it's just a 'kludgey' program!

 

[degibson]

dd works wonders. Compatible with everything.

 

[semo]

i've read somewhere that partimage is better than dd bacause it doesn't copy free sectors and hence is more efficient... or something like that.

for taking/restoring images i use ping but for simple cloning you can use something like pc inspector clone maxx (fits on a floppy) or any of the cloning tools on ubcd.

 

[sourceninja]

I use clonezilla to make a file image of my disk so I can play with alternate operating systems. For example, this weekend I wanted to test ubuntu 8.10 so I made an image of my xp system, put ubuntu on it. Played with it all weekend then dropped the xp image back on to be ready for work monday.

I've never had any trouble with it.

It uses ntfsclone to safe space. dd would clone the entire drive bit for bit (meaning any empty space would also get cloned)

 

[semo]

i'll definitatly try clonezilla since it looks more polished than ping. on the other hand we use ping for pxe booting and is smaller and you can automate some things (network share address, options).

@adtrance, if you plan on deploying images to more than one server, then make sure you sysprep them.

 

[Nothinman]

i've read somewhere that partimage is better than dd bacause it doesn't copy free sectors and hence is more efficient... or something like that.

True but degibson's comment is true also. dd is more compatible because it doesn't understand any filesystems or anything, it just copies every block whether it's free or not so you get a 100% exact image. Cloning tools that understand filesystems save space but they have to understand the filesystem properly otherwise the image won't be complete. And since some filesystems like NTFS have poor public documentation their support is usually iffy.

 

[Evenkeel]

Originally posted by: VinDSL
Well...

First of all I downloaded the Clonezilla ISO and burned a 'Live' CD - only used like 80MB.

...
Anyway, that's what I mean about it being a "kludge"... kapeesh?

Don't get me wrong - I'll continue playing around with it. Maybe it's just something I'm doing wrong - but really - I think it's just a 'kludgey' program!

Thanks for elaborating--it helps. You guys are all way beyond me in experience, and I'm no newbie. The reason I stumbled across Clonezilla is recently in my 8-month old system build my 8-month old Seagate SATA drive started showing bad sectors. I found this out when Vista's swell Complete PC Backup acted like it was backing up for a whole hour, then gave me an evil red progress bar and said the backup had failed due to bad clusters.

Now, chkdsk used to fix stuff like this, but after I don't know how many runs of that, w/no success, I finally broke out the Seagate "Seatools for DOS" bootable CD, and ran it. It took 3 passes to finally reallocate all the bad sectors, before telling me I had a "good" disk. 3 passes? "Good" disk? I don't think so.

Did I mention that was my System drive?

Anyway, feeling my time was limited, as soon as Seatools said it had "fixed" the drive, I ran the Vista backup again, and finally got a good one. Which was fortunate, because then I installed Ghost 14. Even tho I have Norton Internet Security 2009 installed, w/it's sleek new LiveUpdate (which actually seems to work pretty well, surprisingly), Ghost insisted on installing the ancient version of LiveUpdate, not to mention giving me several install errors.

Ooh, this wasn't going well. And all I wanted it for was to clone my C: drive, which the Ghost marketing hype promised it could do.

Well, it couldn't. I've since found out that was partly my fault, for pre-formatting the replacement HD via Vista's Disk Management. I also, stupidly, gave it a drive letter--D:. Ghost could not handle this, and while it did copy the drive, as soon as I tried to boot w/the new drive, it would freeze part-way into the boot.

I've since learned that I basically did everything wrong: never use Disk Management to partition and format what will be a new system drive, never give it a drive letter, etc. I found out the hard way that Vista keeps drive letter assignments permanently in the Registry, in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices. In the right-hand pane I can see my drives listed w/some incomprehensible (to me) binary data. I'm guessing that my failed boots got to the point where Windows was reading the drive letter assignments from that key, found the paths weren't matching up, and just stopped.

I never really wanted Ghost in the first place--I never liked how it sank its hooks so deep in my system. That was the point I was thinking how nice a command-line cloner would be--like Clonezilla.

AFA your experience w/Clonezilla, did it do a good, accurate clone, w/no errors?

I've looked at the screenshots on the Clonezilla site, and have been trying to figure out what the difference is between cloning a partition, or cloning an entire disk. I guess the cloning a partition choice is for people who have a physical hard disk w/more than one partion on it? I never think about that, because I always partition my drives as one large volume.

I've got some older SATA drives in the 200-300 GB range that I'm thinking of using as backup "cartridges" (my main driver currently has 80GB on it), and instead of messing w/backups, just rotate the old drives as clones of my system drive, so I'll always have a working C: drive ready. I bought one of those strange little Thermaltake blacX units--it's sort of a cross between an external encosure and a cable--you just slip a bare HD into the blacX stand, which has a SATA data and power connector that line right up, and connect it externally to your systems via USB or eSATA. (Obviously I'll use eSATA.)

Does Clonezilla recognize attached external devices okay?

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I appreciate your advice.

 

[SolMiester]

OP, I would rather virtualise the physical server and test the upgrade on that 1st, if all good, then roll-out to your production server...

 

[gba]

I am an experienced Ghost user.. I wanted try Clonezlla.. made the bootable CD from the iso... but I hit the wall on my first try making an image of my boot partition. At the screen where it asks you to select the source partition, I darkened the box next to my selection, hit "Enter" but Clonezilla would not move onto the next step, instead it just keeps refreshing the list of source partitions to choose from.. any ideas?

-Thanks

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Evenkeel
I bought one of those strange little Thermaltake blacX units--it's sort of a cross between an external encosure and a cable--you just slip a bare HD into the blacX stand, which has a SATA data and power connector that line right up, and connect it externally to your systems via USB or eSATA. (Obviously I'll use eSATA.)

Does Clonezilla recognize attached external devices okay?

Sorry for the long-winded post, but I appreciate your advice.

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you! I forgot about this thread.

Anyway, funny you should mention it, but...

LoL! I own a Thermaltake BlacX docking station too - the best thing since water!

That's what I used for D2D cloning my Vista lappy HD to the new drive, via Clonezilla.

So, yes, they work fine together! :thumbsup:

I had to use USB2 because my lappy doesn't have eSATA - it has a FireWire/i.LINK port...

The only 'problem' I had (which really wasn't a problem) doing a D2D mirror image from 160GB drive -> 320GB drive was, I ended up with a 160GB mirror image on a 320GB drive, e.g. a 160 GB partition.

When Clonezilla was done, all I had to do is 'tell' Vista Disk Manager to use the entire disk for the primary partition...

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: gba
Clonezilla would not move onto the next step, instead it just keeps refreshing the list of source partitions to choose from.. any ideas?

Well... Hopefully you have it figured out by now!

I've only used Clonezilla one time, and after a couple of false starts, I ended up having to dance on the 'Space Bar' to keep it moving.

Kinda reminded me of playing Pachinko, if you know what that is...

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: gba
Clonezilla would not move onto the next step, instead it just keeps refreshing the list of source partitions to choose from.. any ideas?

Well... Hopefully you have it figured out by now!

I've only used Clonezilla one time, and after a couple of false starts, I ended up having to dance on the 'Space Bar' to keep it moving.

Kinda reminded me of playing Pachinko, if you know what that is...

Thanks VinDSL. indeed, I was able to dance my way through Clonezilla after a little head scratching... D2D worked like a charm.. thanks again for letting us know about the excellent deal!

 

[lucky9]

I use Clonezilla mainly to backup partitions. I'm running SimplyMEPIS Linux as my main OS. There are three SATA hard disks on my computer and I use a 350GB external hard disk on USB to backup to without problems. I have at present 36 partitions counting SWAP. The version of Clonezilla I'm using is about a year old. Since it does everything I want.....

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

...When Clonezilla was done, all I had to do is 'tell' Vista Disk Manager to use the entire disk for the primary partition...

So, may I ask what is your thinking in terms of why you prefer not set up a seperate partition for your data on your Vista lappy?

EDIT: I will start a new thread for this question.. did not mean to hijack.

 

[Crusty]

One thing to keep in mind is to test your image after you make on a spare machine before you actually begin the upgrade process. A bad backup is worth nothing

 

[gba]

Originally posted by: Crusty
One thing to keep in mind is to test your image after you make on a spare machine before you actually begin the upgrade process. A bad backup is worth nothing

How are you able to go about doing that with a boot partition unless you have a spare machine with an identical hardware profile?

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: gba

Originally posted by: Crusty
One thing to keep in mind is to test your image after you make on a spare machine before you actually begin the upgrade process. A bad backup is worth nothing

How are you able to go about doing that with a boot partition unless you have a spare machine with an identical hardware profile?

Well, ideally the spare machine would be a virtual machine which would eliminate that problem. Aside from that, typically in a corporate environment you'll have spare hardware that's identical to your production servers for exactly this reason or in the case of hardware failures. Having the spare hardware is far cheaper then losing data

 

[gba]

Gottcha.

 

[Booty]

Have any of you used Clonezilla in a SAN environment? We're a BladeCenter shop, and all servers boot from SAN... no local disk. Just wondering about what HBA's are supported and/or if anyone has tried it.

Also, anything out there for bare metal restores to different hardware? I know that's asking a lot, but we're looking at a bunch of servers coming off lease next year and, rather than build new boxes and migrate data, it would be nice to just take an image off the old box and restore to the new without doing anything but installing a couple drivers. The applications we're looking at right now for this cost ~$1000/server, though (Christie BMR for TSM and Acronis, in case you're wondering)...

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Booty
Also, anything out there for bare metal restores to different hardware?

I recommend products by StorageCraft and Acronis. Yes, they are $1000. the cost is nothing compared to the time they save, unless your employees work for free.