USB Bare Metal Restore: Data Transfer

Topic

This article explains the final step in the USB Bare Metal Restore process: the data transfer from the Datto device's recovery point to the target machine. This process assumes that you have completed USB Bare Metal Restore: Beginning the Restore and optionally, USB Bare Metal Restore: Advanced Partitioning.

Environment

  • Datto BMR

Description

Verify the partition layout. Then, click CLONE DATA

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Figure 1: Review and Confirm

You will be prompted to confirm your selection, as shown in Figure 2. Type FORMAT in the confirmation box, and then click Confirm.


Figure 2: Format confirmation

The Bare Metal Restore environment will begin the process of transferring data to your target machine. This process may take some time to complete, depending on how much data you are moving. During this process, you will see the status shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3: Transfer process

When the transfer is complete, you will see the following Restore Status screen.

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Figure 4: Restore Status

When you are ready to bring the production machine back online, click Stop Mirroring, followed by Finish and Reboot. If you have a Rescue Agent that is currently running, you will see the confirmation prompt shown in Figure 5.


Figure 5: Confirmation prompt

Clicking Stop Rescue Agent will gracefully shut down the running VM, but not archive the Rescue Agent. Clicking Finish and Reboot will reboot the production machine without gracefully shutting down the running VM.

IMPORTANT  Datto recommends shutting down Rescue Agents before bringing a production machine back online.

Reboot

IMPORTANT  If you restored from a backup that was taken from a Recovery VM, do not take down the VM until you've verified that the data from all volumes has been properly restored to the target machine.

When you restart the target machine, boot into the BIOS (for MBR) or motherboard firmware (for uEFI).

Reset the BIOS or motherboard firmware settings to boot using the disk that contains the OS.

Then, reboot the machine again. If the machine boots properly, you can now remove the USB stick.as the process is complete.

Do not remove the USB stick until the device has completely rebooted and you have verified the machine is booting properly.

Note: DELL SupportAssist

The Datto virtualization process intentionally disables some services in order to boot properly. In particular, DELL SupportAssist (external link) related services, which have been found to cause boot problems with virtualizations. If you require these services, you may need to manually re-enable them after your Bare Metal Restore is complete. These services are:

  • Dell Data Vault Processor
  • Dell Data Vault Collector
  • Dell Data Vault Service API
  • Dell SupportAssist Agent

Troubleshooting

Error: "The BMR process was interrupted. Do you want to resume or start over?"

If the production machine reboots during the Data Transfer process, you will see an error message similar to the example shown in Figure 6.


Figure 6: Interrupted BMR process

If you select the Start Over option, the Bare Metal Restore process will restart from the Booting the Target Machine From USB stage. You will lose any changes you have made to the Bare Metal Restore configuration up to this point.

If you select the Resume option, the Bare Metal Restore process will attempt to continue the data transfer from the point that it was interrupted.

NOTE  When selecting Resume, the progress indicator may show the transfer resuming from up to 40 GB before the failure point. The BMR environment does this as a precaution against transferring any potentially-corrupted data.

Error: "Snapshot(s) failed to write to disk during the Bare Metal Mirroring process."

This error message indicates that one or more snapshots taken by a Rescue Agent could not be written back to the production machine, possibly as a result of an unexpected crash or a reboot of the target hardware.


Figure 7: Snapshots failed to write

In the event that the mirroring process is interrupted, it will attempt to automatically resume. If the most recent snapshot the mirroring process captured is unusable because of the crash, the process will take another snapshot, and perform a differential merge between the new snapshot and the last good snapshot to reconcile differences between the two points.

Troubleshooting Bootability

If the production machine does not boot, you can reboot the target machine into the Bare Metal Restore environment. You will see the options listed in Figure 7.


Figure 8: Start Over / Resume

If you select Resume, the Bare Metal Restore environment will pick up where the process left off. Click Reboot to re-run HIR and attempt to restore bootability to the target machine.

If you select Start Over, the Bare Metal Restore environment will start

If the production machine is still unable to boot, you can try troubleshooting the problem with Microsoft DaRT, a Windows boot CD, or any other tools at your disposal. Alternatively, you can contact Datto Technical Support for further assistance.