Kevin, I agree with Richard's evaluation completely. The TSM backup/restore of the System Object works ... umm.. well, it works when it works. Many versions of the client code have had problems doing restore of the System Object. ( I think the client has to call MS API's 6-7 times to get/restore the data, and there are just too many opportunities for problems.)
That being said, we've done it many times. The problem with relying on the Ghost image as you describe, is that you aren't likely to get that CD cut daily - or even if you do, it's a lot of work. Which means you would be restoring an OLD copy of the registry, which isn't usually what you want. And, there are times when you NEED to backup the system object: If you have workstations (not servers) where the backup occurs while the user is logged on, the backup of the user profile occurs as part of the backup of the HKEY-CURRENT-USER registry key, because ntuser.dat (and other files) are locked. And the same thing applies if you have servers with logged-on accounts other than "system" and need to be able to recover those profiles. Now, based on the traffic on this list, I think only a small fraction of all the TSM clients in the world have these issues, but nonetheless some of us have to deal with them. BUT, if you rely on the restore of the system object, you can't install ANY client patch without THOROUGHLY testing your bare metal restore. In the last 2 years, we have had consistent success with 4.2.0.0 and 5.1.6.2. Another issue: The TSM backup of the System Object on Win2K copies ALL the system protected files daily, even though they haven't changed. That means an additional 1800 (approx.) entries per client per day in your TSM DB. Can be VERY painful if you have hundreds of Win2K clients. SO, here's what we do: We create a Ghost image of our "standard" desktop and server configurations. It contains Win2K, a TSM client, and some other stuff that we always want installed. That way reloading the Ghost image is faster than starting from scratch with the WIn2K install media. We back up the system object for all systems. On servers, we ALSO create a Win2K scheduled task that does an ntbackup of the system object to a flat file daily. TSM then backs up the flat file. (It's easy, costs you almost nothing, and gives you an alternative means of recovery.) For workstation BMR, we restore the ghost image, then use TSM to restore the C: drive, then restore the SYSTEM OBJECT, and restore the user profile if necessary. For server BMR, we restore the ghost image, then the Windows admins use the ntbackup copy to restore system state. If we just want to restore the Registry, we use the TSM System Object restore. I know there are others on the list that do NOT back up the system object with TSM at all and use the ntbackup method only, to reduce the load on the network and the TSM server DB. We haven't starting working with ASR yet, we are still all Win2K. If you search the archives of this list at search.adsm.org, you can find numerous comments from people who are already working with it. That should give you some ideas to work with... Wanda (my opinion and no body else's) Prather Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 443-778-8769 "Intelligence has much less practical application than you'd think" - Dilbert/Scott Adams -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Godfrey [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 10:15 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Bare metal restore, ASR etc. I noticed that Richard Sims says on his TSM facts page (a most excellent site - http://people.bu.edu/rbs/ADSM.QuickFacts) that Bare Metal Restore is grudgingly performed by TSM. If it's so difficult to do, could anyone tell me what the best practice is for backing up/restoring a complete Win 2000 Server? My idea is this: 1) Image backup (with Norton Ghost, for example) of the C drive. Could be saved onto CDROM for example. 2) TSM backup of all other (i.e. data) drives. A restore would then be quite straightforward: 1) Restore from the Ghost image. 2) TSM restore of the data drives. I noticed that TSM now provides for backup of Windows system objects. Do most people back these up? I personally don't (at the moment at least). Does anyone have any views on whether or not it's a good idea to back up system objects? I think that making a Ghost image kind of eliminates the need. Also, has anyone any experience of using ASR on Win 2003? If so, is it easier to use/better than BMR? Does ASR exist for other Windows versions? That was a lot of questions! Grateful for any feedback Kevin