New Dell T320 server with WS 2012 standard (our main software VAR doesn't yet support install on R2), with LTO-5 tape drive.
Have used Symantec BE (currently BE2102) for tape backups on prior servers for past several years. Correctly configured tape backups can be used for disaster recovery, booting to the BE DR DVD.
BE doesn't support WS 2012 (+/- R2) yet, may be released in as soon as a week or two.
Need temporary total server backup each night with disaster recovery functionality.
Have a buffalo terastation quad 8 TB running WSS 2008 R2 for NAS, and a few 1 TB seagate portable USB drives for offsite copies.
Have made a successful initial BMR backup to the NAS with windows server backup, and plan manual backups to be scheduled each day to different directory on the NAS, since backups to network drives overwrite prior backups. Copies of NAS backups for offsite storage will be made to the portable drives the next morning via USB 3 port on the NAS.
My only experience with similar image restore is with my laptops, with system images stored on similar portable external HDs, renaming all but the desired backup with extensions indicating date. Both have had system images restored in both Windows 8, and now 8.1 without any driver problems, booting to the equivalent of Windows Recovery Environment (reached after a variety of options after boot) on each laptop. Haven't tried installation disc, as not from hardware error such as HD failure and replacement. Each has a variety of drivers that would presumably be needed from HP or Dell for successful operation. The USB 3 external hard disc is recognized, and image restore has been flawless on each laptop.
The server has three 1 TB SAS drives in RAID 5, configured as one virtual C: drive. Dell tech support told me that the drivers for the Dell RAID controller are intrinsic to the OS; I had asked them why no drivers were available on their driver update site. I plan a partial test early this week with reboot to the recovery environment, then see if the network storage site is available, then see if the virtual disc is recognized.
Will the BMR restore the image to the virtual drive, or won't it be recognized?
Also have a smaller BMR on a 64GB flash drive made after initial OS install and configuration, prior to software installation and production use. Don't plan to use it unless fresh OS install is needed.
Backup choices were limited to local disc or network share, so made the flash drive a share to allow use for backups.
Can the BMR on the flash drive be used the same way as the NAS backup, if plugged into a functioning system on our network and configured as a network share?
Thanks