This is for AD total disaster recovery, but the question is for general backup/restore.
To avoid the delay or difficulties of getting an identical hardware when System State restore is required, MS recommends running at least one DC on virtual box, make backups from it, and in case of disaster, restore system state to a new VM. I agree this approach.
If not using removable media, there are 3 possible target storage for system state backup: dedicated disk, dedicated volume, and a network share. My plan is to use dedicated disk or volume - when the main server is offline line, I can quickly mount the dedicate disk/volume to a new VM. However, backup made to dedicated disk/volume seems to be usable only to the server on which it was made! If I mount it to a different hardware/VM, it's not recognized by the backup program. Did I miss anything here? Can this be done? Why the limitation?
I don't really want to use network share as it requires a third server to host the share, it also means when you need to restore AD, you need to make the third server and share accessible using local account.
http://strongline.blogspot.com
