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We are backupping daily the whole server (Windows Server 2008 R2) with the "Bare Metal Recovery" option, is there any way to verify backup integrity without restoring everything on a new machine periodically?

Thanks.

abenci
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1 Answers1

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The only absolutely reliable method of making sure a backup works is to restore it. Sorry but that's how it is.

You can maybe look for ways to reduce the time and cost associated with this by seeing if you can restore to virtual machines rather than having to keep lots of hardware around dedicated to testing restores.

Rob Moir
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    Exactly, We use Veeam Backup & Replication for backing up our VMware ESXi infrastructure. The new version 5 is really nice, since it tests the recovery each and every time, by running the backups directly to VM's in a fenced off network, and doing some tests such as pinging and running application-specific scripts. Only after these are successful is the backup declared a success. – Martijn Heemels Nov 12 '10 at 09:49
  • Using a VM is really a nice idea! – abenci Nov 12 '10 at 11:24
  • I use disk2vhd quite a bit for bare metals, I can virt or do baremetal at that point. – tony roth Nov 12 '10 at 16:51