Well most people would have thought no its not possible and believe me i was too but after successfully testing the same process for 2 Servers restore Windows 2008 ,Windows 2000 now i can pretty confidently say the process below works..
Here you go the steps:
Here you go the steps:
Pre check list:
1. Before we start to think of OS
restore, please double check the last successful System State Backup. An old or
failed system state backup will only lead to OS Corruption.
2. We need to be aware of Windows OS
Version and service pack level.
Why - System state restore would not work if you are not on same Service
pack level it was backed up.
3. OS Install folder and partition
information
Why – System state restore will
fail if it’s not on same OS folder (Ex. default C:\windows) it existed before
backup. Also OS partition drive should be same or larger than before.
Restore
Steps:
1. Install the Base OS with Service pack
level.
2. Install any drivers if needed to
enable NIC card.
3. Install any SAN drivers needed to
bring SAN disk online, because System state restore will check for all disk’s online.
4. Assign Production IP to NIC(Note: No need to join to
domain, work group is fine)
5. Request BACKUP team to install Backup
software.
6. After Backup software install,
confirm with BACKUP team if they can communicate with Backup cell and all looks
ok.
7. Install Windows Backup feature, Valid
only for Windows 2008 and above OS. Windows 2003 it’s installed by default.
8. Copy the System state backup from
network share to local drive if backup is not on the Server.
9. Wintel will start the System state
restore process and make sure the Sever doesn't get rebooted after successful restore. We need to
reboot Server only after C drive restore.
10.
After
successful system state restore, request BACKUP team to restore complete C drive
data content with NTFS permission.
11.
After
C drive restore complete, reboot the server and be patient, it takes a while to
come online.
