Windows 2008 SBS - bare metal restore/disaster recovery

I have created a bit of a problem for myself and hope to benefit from
the experience here.

I have an HP DL380 G4 running Windows 2008 SBS. The system has two
RAID arrays on the built in Smart Array 6i. The OS is a RAID1 array
comprised of two 146GB drives and the data array is RAID1+0 made from
4x 72.8GB drives. Each array contains a single partition using 100% of
the available space.

Everything on this server is operating perfectly and it’s been solid
for about five months.

I am creating/testing a new disaster recovery plan. In the past the
plan has been old school - reinstall server from scratch, configure,
patch, restore data. But given that I have backups from Windows Server
Backup (via the SBS Console), I thought I would try a bare metal
restore as it could save a lot of time. I booted into Windows Complete
PC Restore to try a bare metal restore to an HP DL385 G1 (AMD Opteron
equivalent of the DL380 G4). This system has 4x72.8GB drives
configured in a RAID1+0 array.

When attempting to restore, I get an error about the destination drive
being too small. If I understand correctly, the destination partition
has to be larger than the source partition in order for this to work.

Given where I am now, what options do I have in terms of a disaster
recovery plan?

Ideally I think I would like to use the Complete PC Restore route,
although given the hardware is a bit different, I am not sure it will
work properly anyway… and even if it did, is this the best option for
disaster recovery in WIndows 2008 SBS?

I don’t like to mess with a perfectly working server (if its not
broke..), but the server is only using 57GB of the 146GB RAID1 OS
partition, so presumably one option is to resize the array to say 70GB
and create a new partition with the remaining space. How reliable is
partition resizing with NTFS on Windows 2008? Can you recommend any
software to do it?

Another option is obviously to purchase some 300GB drives, but they
are pretty expensive so I would really rather not.

Any other ideas or recommendations?

This is the thing I HATE about SBS 08's backup - you can not restore the
system to a smaller array/drive, even if the "data" would fit. It no
longer works with Ghost or NT Backup.

I fought this on a QA server for days, trying all sorts of things, and
it's just not possible to restore to a smaller Physical drive/array even
if all of the data would fit with lots of spare/free space left over.

The builtin volume resize in Windows Server 2008 (and thus SBS 2008) should
work fine to shrink the volume. You don't need to shrink it very much, just
enough to get it squeezed on to the recovery server.

Diskmgmt.msc, select the volume, right click, shrink volume, if I remember
correctly off the top of my head. I'd definitely use the native solution -
it isn't as aggressive at finding space as some third party solutions, but
it's fully supported and works just fine.

Perfect. And exactly the sort of test that gives you real confidence that
you'll actually be able to recover. Now, take it one step further. Write the
whole experience up in some detail. What you did, what you ran in to, how
you fixed it, etc. What you wish you'd done first. Do it now, while it's
fresh in your mind. You'll likely find other things you want to tweak in the
process.

I shrunk the volumes by 20MB each using disk management which worked
fine.
However I tried the restore again and received a similar error. Turns
out, the RAID arrays on the spare server I was restoring to were
created in the incorrect order such that what was presented to the OS
as Disk 0 on the live server was now Disk 1 on the spare server, and
vice versa (and disk0 and disk1 were different sizes).

Once I fixed that, the restore went fine. I restored to the DL385
(AMD) from the DL380 (Intel) backup. It booted but initially showed
only the SBS console – no start menu or desktop – after 5 minutes it
came right and started installing device drivers automatically. After
it finished installing it requested a reboot and after the reboot it
worked fine.

Yeah, I intend to document it over the next few days. Because I have
the spare server just sitting there ready to go, it shouldn't take too
much to document the procedure.
I have taken it one step further and attempted an Application restore
of Exchange and Sharepoint. I'm running into some problems with that..
might be the subject of new thread soon.

[dav9]

can you give info about this
>Once I fixed that, the restore went fine

how did u fix it

i seems to have the same problem
restore went fine
yet the operating system wont kick

i think its that server 2008 boots based on the disks
so i tried the option of update the bootcode

when i check with bootrec /scanos
i always get - total identified windows installation :0

i also try delete bcd file and recreate it
it created fine while finding a new os

so i think this boot disk is my problem

"Turns
out, the RAID arrays on the spare server I was restoring to were
created in the incorrect order such that what was presented to the OS
as Disk 0 on the live server was now Disk 1 on the spare server, and
vice versa (and disk0 and disk1 were different sizes)."