LifeBoat: An Autonomic Backup and Restore Solution

We present an innovative backup and restore solution, called LifeBoat, for Windows machines. Our solution provides for local and remote backups and ``bare metal'' restores. Classic backup systems do a file system backup and require the machine to be installed before the system can be restored or they do a block for block backup of the system image which allows for a ``bare metal'' restore, but makes it hard to access individual files in the backup. Our solution does a file system backup while still allowing the system to be completely restored onto a new hard drive. Windows presents some particularly difficult problems during both backup and restore. We describe the information we store during backup to enable the ``bare metal'' restore. We also describe some of the problems we ran into and how we overcame them. Not only do we provide a way to restore a machine, but we also describe the rescue environment which allows machine diagnostics and recovery of f...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: LISA
• Authors: Ted Bonkenburg, Dejan Diklic, Benjamin Reed, Mark A. Smith, Michael Vanover, Steve Welch, Roger Williams
• Keywords: Backup, Bare Metal, File System Backup, LISA 2004, Operating System