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I'm rehearsing a virtual machine bare metal restore.
Backups are taken daily and saved on a secure external server.
We are assuming a total disaster, so bad that no domain controller is available, so, I can't use System Center Virtual Machine Manager just the 'default' Hyper-v manager.

The recovery I'm trying to do is as follows:

  • Setup a new windows 2019 Server.
  • Add a working Hyper-V role.
  • Create a new virtual machine with the same original configuration.
  • On the new VM connect valid Windows 2019 CD/DVD ISO image.
  • Boot from the ISO image.
  • Select repair.
  • Do a System Image Recovery
  • on Windows cannot find a system Image Backup, I press Cancel, Next, Advanced and select Search for a System Image on the Network
  • Connect to the network (grab a coffee)

And here, I tried different options: to use a unprotected share, with or without '$' names, using ip address, with username/password: nothing seems to work. Always the same answer:

An internal error occurred. The following information might help you resolve the error:   
The network path was not found. (0x800070035)
fcm
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1 Answers1

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That sounds ridiculously complicated. Basically keep backups for a start config separately. So, after step 2 you restore the backups (dc etc.) and take it from there.

TomTom
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  • Thanks, good idea, but this was not the question. – fcm Jan 30 '20 at 18:17
  • It is - because I have a seriously hard problem imagining a total desaster that also takes down the tapes from last day. – TomTom Jan 30 '20 at 18:44
  • Tapes? We have aprox 1 Pb in active data and aprox 30 virtual machines on SSD that can't be consolidated. Can you imagine incremental backup of aprox 3tb daily to tapes? Just Disk to Disk of 3TB takes many hours. BTW, tapes can also be damaged by fire and water. A good disaster-recovery plan must have no space for errors and little or no downtime. The vault server is offsite fiber connected. – fcm Jan 30 '20 at 22:33
  • Yes, you can. Quite easily actually. LTO 8 has an uncompressed capacity of 12TB. Write speed is 360mb/s. A lower range tape library can handle distribution over 4 tape drives. That is 48tb per set, 1.2gb/second. THe problem is the same - seriously. 1pb data also needs to go over the fiber. Anyhow, that is not even what we talk - you talk about rebooting a whole infrastructure after desaster. THat does not need the active data, it needs the infrastructure - Hyper-V, domain controllers and some other machines - the rest can come in step . And then you do not need to make NEW vm's. – TomTom Jan 31 '20 at 07:51