User`s guide

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 SonicWALL

Bare Metal Recovery – a complete solution for

corporate users

SonicWALL Bare Metal Recovery is a comprehensive backup and recovery solution for

heterogeneous computer infrastructure that may include any combination of physical and

virtual, networked and standalone, Windows- and Linux-based servers.

SonicWALL Bare Metal Recovery creates a transportable image, independent of the

hardware platform that can be restored directly to and from any virtual or physical

environment.

Minimizes downtime

SonicWALL Bare Metal Recovery enables you to restore systems in minutes, not hours or

days. An entire system can be restored from an image that includes everything the

system needs to run: the operating system, applications, databases, and configurations. it

is not necessary to reinstall software or reconfigure your system or network settings. The

complete system restoration can be performed to an existing system, to a new system

with different hardware, or to virtual machines.

Eases Administration

Wizards guide users through backup and recovery tasks, ensuring the product can be

implemented with minimal user training.

Automates Backup

With the scheduling capability in SonicWALL Bare Metal Recovery, you simply create

backup tasks, tailored by group, or certain times or events.

To ensure that backups have occurred, or if user intervention is required, you can request

notifications via email or Windows Pop-up. You can view SonicWALL events in the

Windows Application Events Log or SonicWALL own log files. Log messages can be

automatically sent out to SNMP clients.

The product also supports the creation of custom commands before and after backups.

For example, users can automatically run anti-virus products before an image is created

and verify the validity of backups after the image has been created. And because these

tasks can be scheduled, you need not recreate the script to run the pre- and post-event

tasks each time; you can set the scheduled events once and they will run each time

automatically.

Ensures 24 X 7 Uptime

With SonicWALL’ patented drive snapshot technology, systems can be imaged while they

are in use, ensuring 24-by-7 system availability. This technology enables the product to

backup and image critical operating system files, the master boot record and any

partition-based boot records without requiring a reboot.

A feature that allows you to suspend database activity for several seconds is provided so

that you can create a valid image of mission-critical applications such as Microsoft

Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. This database suspension process

supports Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). If your database or operating

system does not support VSS, SonicWALL Bare Metal Recovery will execute your custom

commands to execute database suspension.