CallManager Disaster Recovery Options

[lnthompson]

I am just curious what people are using to backup their CallManager servers. Outside of clustering these servers, what is the fastest way to bring them back online in the event of a failure.

I am looking for something that can backup the system while it is live and preferably restore the entire image (including OS/Database) to an identical server that we have in a hosting center.

[thisisshanky]

Lot of people use entire system backup, in addition to using BARS either to a network share or tape backup. I dont see any other disk utilities other than Diskeeper 9.0 listed in the supported third party tools from Cisco.

I have heard a few people using Norton Ghost to take an entire system image (this wont be a live and current image). I dont think this software is supported by TAC.

I would not recommend this, as again its not reco. software from Cisco. I have used under lab conditions, a software called Acronis True Image server. This will take a live backup of your system, without rebooting to DOS, (Like Norton Ghost does) and creates an image for you. You can create a boot CD and recover the image to another server (identical hardware).

HTH

[yshraybman]

The best way to prevent against hard disk failure is mirroring.

For all other catastrophic failures use BARS. If you have a spare server ready it may take about 3 hours to do complete rebuild. Which is not that bad in clustered environment.

Cisco does not support ghosting or any other live imaging. This may work well but in case of problems cisco will not support it. So have BARS backup ready at all times. It is a good idea to exersize restore in lab environment so you are familiar with the process and to test the integrity of the backup.