Can clone VM be application backup plan? - security

I am application developer and don't know much about virtual machine(VM).
however, our application is resided on a VM. frequent patch need be apply to fix/update this application. For diaster recovery, It was suggest to backup every thing on the server. so, once server is restored, no application need be re-installed and configured.
our network administrator thinks it can be done by cloning VM. but if we want to backup the clone to a tape. it would expose VM to backup drive. any one who can access to it can erase the VM and every thing woudl be gone. it is very risky.
I would appreciate it if you could let me what you think on this or any suggestion.

Cloning is perfectly acceptable.
You don't have to backup to tape... It can be done to a NAS for example, and with the proper security and setup, backups cannot be deleted by unauthorized people.

You can use any NAS and VM replication software like Veeam, Acronis or Nakivo. It will totally solve your problems. All software has various permission settings so you can control who can and who can not delete your data.

Related

Factory reset Windows Server 2016 on Azure

I installed a few beta version of some apps and now the functionality of the Windows is broken.
Is there any way I can reset the windows to it's initial state from the portal or I have to remove it and create a new one?
If you have not backup this VM or take a snapshot of this VM, we should re-create a new VM.
As mentioned by Jason, if a backup or a snapshot was taken, you could use them to recover the VM.
You have mentioned, ‘now the functionality of the Windows is broken’, unsure if you are facing some boot issue or something else. Please do let me know if feasible, you could look at fixing the underlying issue. Or just recreate the problematic VM and not the entire Resource Group itself.
I would like to highlight the process of recovering the OS below:
Delete the VM encountering issues, keeping the virtual hard disks.
Attach and mount the virtual hard disk to another Windows VM for troubleshooting purposes.
Connect to the troubleshooting VM. Edit files or run any tools to fix issues on the original virtual hard disk.
Unmount and detach the virtual hard disk from the troubleshooting VM.
Create a VM using the original virtual hard disk.
Refer the document for more details on this process.

Backup server for a NAS with web interface

I'm evaluating the features of a full-fledged backup server for my NAS (synology). I need
FTP access (backup remote sites)
SSH/SCP access (backup remote server)
web interface (in order to monitor each backup job)
automatic mail alerting if jobs fail
lightweight software (no mysql, sqlite ok)
optional: S3/Glacier support (as target)
optional: automatic long-term storage after a given time (ie local disk for 3 months, Glacier after that)
seems like biggest player are Amanda, Bacula and duplicity (likewise)
Any suggestion?
thanks a lot
Before jumping on the full server backups, please clarify these questions:
Backup software's are agent and non agent based, which one do you want to use?
Are you interested to go for open source or proprietary software?
Determine your source and destination are they in the same LAN or in the Internet. Try to get the picture of the bandwidth between source and destination and the volume of data getting backed up?
Also if you are interested try to know gui requirements and various other os platform support for backup software.
Importantly try to know the mail notification configuration.
Presently am setting one for my project and so far have installed bacula-v7.0.5 with webmin as gui. Trying the same config in the amazon cloud utilizing s3 as storage by mounting s3fs into the ec2 instance.
My bacula software is a free community version.Haven't explored the mail notification until now.

What happens to Azure virtual machines software, if vm size is updated?

I use MS azure virtual machine. IIS running, hosting different web sites. What happens ,when I update vm from extra small to small ? Should I take a backup or nothing is required?There are some IIS bindings, should I move those settings ?
I think it is similar to gave more memory in vmware machine . But since it is vital for us, I am asking this question .
The VM will be gracefully shutdown and brought back up (most likely on a completely different VM host), so you will see some downtime as that transition occurs. The actual data for your machine is stored in BLOB storage, not on the VM itself, so you don't specifically need to worry about a back up because you are making this change. That said, if this is a production machine you need to be thinking about backups anyway.

How to duplicate a virtual PC with SharePoint, K2 and domain controller

Is anyone aware of an easy way of duplicating and renaming a virtual PC (can be MS VPC, VMWare or Virtual Box), which is running SharePoint, K2 and acting as a domain controller? I’m looking for a method of creating an image which can be quickly and easily copied and run by multiple parties on the same network simultaneously without name conflicts. It’s either that or go through a ground-up build on each and every machine as far as I can see.
I'd advise against it.. renaming an installed SharePoint machine is sure to cause you pain indefinately and unexpectedly. The way to go is with scripted installs:
create copy of a VM with OS
rename machine + run sysprep
script install SQL
script install MOSS
script configure MOSS (replaces config wizard + a lot of manual settings)
It can all be done unattended.
As a shortcut to install short-lived development machines I have used the following. Just make sure the SharePoint configuration wizard runs after the rename and there should be no problem.
create a copy of a VM having: OS+SQL+MOSS(no config wiz)
rename machine
script configure MOSS
It has the advantage of your development machines being identically installed. Takes about 10 minutes to create a fresh one. It doesn't have sysprep but they are renamed so you can run them all on your network. Not running sysprep has never caused me grief but I wouldn't do it for production environments. Running the configuration of MOSS scripted makes sure it will work on the renamed environment (and all MOSS farms are configured exactly the same, same ports, SSP setup, etc, yay!)
For MOSS configuration scripting see h tt p://stsadm.blogspot.com/2008/03/sample-install-script.html
Plently of samples for SQL out there too.
SharePoint doesn't like having the server re-named from under it's feet (so to speak). Neither does SQL Server (which I assume you'd have installed on the VM for the installation). Not sure about a DC being renamed, there's probably problems there as well...
Having said that, there are some instructions I've read for renaming both SharePoint machines and SQL Server machines, so you might get somewhere.
On the third hand, I've tried it a few times and always ended up rebuilding the server from the ground up for SharePoint as it can get subtly mangled in ways which aren't always apparent straight away (the admin interface and shared services seem to be especially easy to confuse). I've found that I can build a vanilla MOSS install pretty quickly these days...
Sharepoint writes the name of the server into configuration tables in SQL Server. So if you change the name of the server, things stop working.
What you can do, is to install just the OS. Then take a copy each time you need a new machine. Run sysprep
to give the machine a new name. Then install SQL Server and MOSS.
This is not exactly what you are after but it should save you some time.
I've done this, and it wasn't too bad.
Rename the SharePoint-server first, then rename the Windows server.
This posting has a nice checklist.
Don't forget to remove the NIC node from the settings file of the virtual machine, otherwise you get name collision due to duplicate MAC addresses. Here's a how-to.
I believe the solutions above are really good. But I would suggest an alternative ...
If this is a development virtual PC I would suggest that you do the following
Do not rename the server
Change the IP address to be on different network
Change the MAC address so that there are no packet collisions
Since you are using it as a development VPC, edit the computer's lmhosts file edit the entry to point to the new IP address
You might want to skip the step 2 and be on the same network. But changing the hosts file will still point back to you. For example you server name was "myserver" and it was pointed 192.168.1.100 which was the local ip (has hosts file entry) , then if you copy the server give it ip 192.168.1.150 and edit the hosts file and point myserver to 192.168.1.150, the system will still work flawlessly. There will some domain name collisions in the event log of the machine, but it wont affect your development.

Sharepoint disaster recovery

What are your disaster recovery plans for Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 ?
Currently we are backuping all databases (1 content, admin, search and config) using sql backup tools, and backuping the front end server via dataprotector.
To test our backups, we use another server farm, restore the content database (following the procedure on technet) and create a new application that uses this database. We just have to redeploy solutions on the newly created sharepoint application.
However, we have to change database access credentials (on sql server) : the user accounts used on production aren't the same as those used on our "test" farm.
At the end, we can restore our content database and access all our sites. Searching doesn't work, but we're investigating.
Is this restore scenario reliable (as in supported by microsoft) ?
You can't really backup / restore both config database and search database:
restoring config database only work if your new farm have exactly the same server names
when you restore the search database, the fulltext index is not synchronize. however, this is not a problem as you can just reindex.
As a result, I would say that yes, this a reliable for content. But take care of:
You may have to redo some configuration (AAM, managed path...).
This does not include customization, you want to keep a backup of your solution
Reliability is in the eye of the beholder. In this case, if your tests of the restore process is successful, then yes, it is reliable.
A number of my clients run SharePoint (both MOSS and WSS) in virtual environments, SQL Server is also virtualised and backed up both with SQL tools and with Volume Shadow copy.
The advantage of a Virtual Environment is downtime is only as long as it takes your Virtual Server host to boot the images.
If you are not using Virtualisation, then remember to backup transaction logs regularly as this will make it easier to restore to a given point in the day - it also means that your transaction logs dont grow too big!
I prefer to use the stsadm -o backup command 'for catastrophic backup' as it says in the help. This can be scheduled but requires some maintenance of the backup metadata XML file when you start running out of disk space and need to archive older backups. It has the advantage of transferring over timer jobs (usually) and other configuration because as Nico says, restoring the config database won't work for most situations.
To restore, you can use the user interface which is nice and not have to mess around with much else. I think it restores your solutions as well but haven't tested that extensively.

Resources