wayner Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 I have a system running WHS2011 that is used as a file server and to backup all of the Windows client PCs in my home. I am considering replacing this system with unRAID. Using unRAID as a file server should be simple but is there an application that I can run on unRAID that will back up a Windows system that is running at the time, and then facilitate bare metal backups for times when a SSD/HDD fails? Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 I would suggest you look into this product, its free and designed to backup physical machines. It's simple to install and configure and you can point the backup to a network share on your unRAID server. This program makes you create a bootable disc and is designed for bare metal recoveries. https://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 You can install your WHS2011 as VM for backing up the Windows clients, that's what I do. Quote Link to comment
wayner Posted January 6, 2017 Author Share Posted January 6, 2017 Thanks folks. Johnnie - does everything work for you with restores. WHS had some issues with UEFI restores and I continue to have problems when doing restores like that and I have had to find other ways to restore - like the restore wizard that restores to another Windows client. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 6, 2017 Share Posted January 6, 2017 It's been like 3 or 4 years since I needed to do a restore, almost certainly not uefi at the time, first time I hear about uefi restore issues so can't help with that. Quote Link to comment
wayner Posted January 12, 2017 Author Share Posted January 12, 2017 You can install your WHS2011 as VM for backing up the Windows clients, that's what I do. Was this pretty straightforward to do or were there any tricks? How much hard drive space did you give WHS for the system partition? And I guess the client backups go into the main unRAID pool? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted January 12, 2017 Share Posted January 12, 2017 Sorry I confused WHS2011 with Win Server essentials 2012 R2, this is the one I'm using know. I had WHS2011 before but on bare metal, but I'm sure there are people on the forum using it as a VM, you should search the forum, closest template should be Windows 2008 Server. IIRC WHS2011 needs a 160GB system partition (although there was a way to get around that), but since vdisks are sparse you can choose 160GB capacity and it will only allocate the amount really used. As for the backups destination I use a second vdisk on an unassigned device, but you can use the array. Quote Link to comment
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