For those interested here's a recap of the results.
Started at the colo. Remembered to bring a jacket with. Tried to do another restore from backup and system blue screened with 21a, fatal error. Tried a couple of fixes with negative results. Interesting thing here concerning Dell AppAssure backup/restore for disaster recovery. Dell makes mention one of the features of the product is you can restore to a VM. What I was told by the local guy is that this VM must be created before you do the backup/restore. This VM was never created. Seems whomever helped him set it up original left this part out. Lesson learned. I misunderstood earlier when I said he had an ISO for backup. He said the backup could be mounted like an ISO file. Went to the fresh install option. While installing SBS 2011 made sure all the clients important local files were backed up (Outlook, favorites, documents, etc.). Found out they had Folder Redirection turned on but it wasn't working properly for everyone. During the client backups discovered 5 machines where there was no local .ost file to export. Will address later. After SBS was installed went through the To-do list and created all the users, groups, shares and started the updates downloading. Did a quick test of the IT guys computer with a disjoin/rejoin, restore and everything was fine. Quit for the day. Sunday started at one of the sites and did the disjoin/rejoin, restore on all the computers there. Surprising had no issues with any of the computers. This part went smooth. Went to the second site and pretty much the same results. There were a couple computers where the local admin password didn't work. Changed it and all finished well. Went back to the office to start the data restore. This is where it got interesting. From the office we RDP into the backup server and the SBS server. Both servers located at the colo connected to a Cisco gig switch and started copying files. We noticed that the copying files window showed files being copied and then seem to hang on a file. Let it go for about a half hour with no change to the window. Checked destination folder size didn't change. Checked both servers performance and both showed no activity other than just idling. Cancelled the copy and then waited again for a while. Finally did an End Task. Rebooted the servers just in case and then checked the destination folder again. Figured during the backup maybe some corrupt files or something were causing issues. Started copying again but a small folder and this went through fine. Did another folder and it hung at a different location. Checked from a couple of clients and could get to some folders but not others. Checked the folder permissions at the destination folder and they looked correct. Propagated the permissions down the folder to include everything and tried again. Same result. Decided to walk up the tree and check permissions. Found the permissions were messed up. Some folders had no owner, missing groups, some inherited, some not. How they got that way is a question that will never be answered. After correcting that started the copying again and let in run overnight. After that we called it a day. Monday went back to finish up. Finished copying data to the SBS server and client locations. Gave the tech a crash course on using Group Policy on automating some of his tasks. Created drive mappings and discussed printers. Tested and verified everything again and called it finished. In the end he was happy because he was able to correct some things he didn't like with the old setup, clean up folders and accounts and lower his backup size. He is going to look at getting the VM created so that the disaster recovery part is tested. For some strange reason he doesn't want to do this again. Art DeKneef Avanti Computers Mesa, AZ 480-649-4430 Office 480-529-4430 Mobile From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Jon Harris Sent: Tuesday, September 2, 2014 4:34 PM To: ntsysadm@lists.myitforum.com Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Rebuilding/restoring a SBS 2011 server check. If not you may want to see if you can boot some form of Linux or Windows PE to get the data off the drives before you start working them. I too have seen this and it was not pretty at all. We ended up booting to a PE CD and moving accessible data off to a USB drive then rebuilding the machine to a better state. Separate system and data drives along with better setup for backups. We got enough off to keep the client happy but not all was accessible after all was said and done. Jon > From: gavin.wi...@smppartners.com <mailto:gavin.wi...@smppartners.com> > To: ntsysadm@lists.myitforum.com <mailto:ntsysadm@lists.myitforum.com> > Subject: RE: [NTSysADM] Rebuilding/restoring a SBS 2011 server check. > Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2014 08:46:02 +0000 > > I predict a new server install. > > Manually re-joining all the workstations and a manual recovery of the data. > > The odds of that server getting restored with the information given is almost none existent, Iv seen things like this before, and a rebuild is normally the only way to move forward. > > Just hope that the data was backed up. > > Gavin Wilby > IT Support Engineer > > -----Original Message----- > From: listsad...@lists.myitforum.com <mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com> [mailto:listsad...@lists.myitforum.com] On Behalf Of Susan Bradley > Sent: 29 August 2014 20:00 > To: ntsysadm@lists.myitforum.com <mailto:ntsysadm@lists.myitforum.com> > Subject: Re: [NTSysADM] Rebuilding/restoring a SBS 2011 server check [DETECTED AS SPAM]; > > Yes, Dell does this. One big hunking C drive. > > He seriously has no good backup to restore the server to? > > As you are disjoining/rejoining and having a really fun labor day weekend. > > Susan Bradley > Still migrating the msmvps.com blogs but we're getting closer. > blogs.msmvps.com/bradley is the new url and redirects are in place Have I mentioned how much migrations are REALLY painful? > > On 8/29/2014 11:38 AM, Art DeKneef wrote: > > > > Seems to be my week for strange things falling in my lap to fix. > > > > Guy called me Tuesday about a downed SBS 2011 server. He was working > > with Microsoft for the past couple of days trying to recover the > > server/store from corruption. The original IT guy couldn't/wouldn't > > help him. Tuesday it had been down a week. No email, Internet, server > > access. I had him backup everyone's Outlook to a PST file just in > > case. Told him to turn DNS/DHCP on the router/firewall so they had > > Internet access. Have a Spam box of some kind filtering email. Users > > can now access it via a web client to check stored email. Basic stuff > > so they could function a little. > > > > Called this morning and seems the server was hosed really bad. > > Microsoft couldn't recover the server/store so he is going to > > reinstall the software and start from rebuilding the domain. Of course > > he is hoping to not have to recreate 50 users, the shares, permissions > > as much as possible. Somehow I feel there isn't any good recent > > documentation around. > > > > He thinks he has a clean backup in an ISO format he can mount. It > > seems this ISO has the server as everything on C: drive. I asked about > > the server and it is a Dell server, unknown model, with 3 drives in a > > RAID 5 configuration. Everything installed on the C: drive. Who does > > that? > > > > The plan is for him to reinstall the software and then apply all the > > updates. Should be finished later today. Then tomorrow go there and > > help him see if the ISO backup is good and get the shares from the > > registry and import them to the new install. And try to see if I can > > recover the Active Directory from the ISO and restore that to the new > > install. If not then we will be walking around a lot rejoining the > > computers to the new install. > > > > I'm sure I left out a few things but anything obvious I missed? > > > > Thanks. > > > > Art DeKneef > > > > Avanti Computers > > > > Mesa, AZ > > > > 480-649-4430 Office > > > > 480-529-4430 Mobile > > > > > > SMP Partners Limited, SMP Trustees Limited and SMP Fund Services Limited are licensed by the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission. SMP Accounting & Tax Limited is a member of the ICAEW Practice Assurance Scheme. > > SMP Partners Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 000908V > Directors: M.W. Denton, M.J. Derbyshire, P.N. Eckersley, S.E McGowan, O. Peck, J.J. Scott, S.J. Turner > > SMP Trustees Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 068396C > Directors: A.C. Baggesen, M.W. Denton, O. Peck, J.J. Scott, J. Watterson, J. Cubbon > > SMP Fund Services Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 120288C > Directors: V. Campbell, M.W. Denton, P.N. Eckersley, D.A. Manser, S.E McGowan, O. Peck, J.J. Scott, R.K. Corkill > > SMP Accounting & Tax Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 001316V > Directors: I.F. Begley, A.J. Dowling, P. Duchars, P.N. Eckersley, J.J. Scott, S.J. Turner > > SMP Capital Markets Limited registered in the Isle of Man, Company Registration No: 002438V > Directors: M.W. Denton, M.J. Derbyshire, D.F Hudson, S.E McGowan, O. Peck, J.J. Scott. > > SMP Partners Limited, SMP Trustees Limited, SMP Fund Services Limited, SMP Accounting & Tax Limited and SMP Capital Markets Limited are members of the SMP Partners Group of Companies. > > This email is confidential and is subject to disclaimers. Details can be found at: http://www.smppartners.com/disclaimer.asp > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. > For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com > ______________________________________________________________________ > >
