Rapid Desktop Replacement
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Microsoft licensing isn't bad. Cisco makes all licensing complicated. Heck their EULA effectively blocks the used market unless you are a Cisco authorized dealer.
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@BRRABill Check Veeam Endpoint Backup, please. It’s a free backup tool that has scheduled incremental application aware backups (thru MS VSS) and bare metal recovery functionality (similar/dissimilar hardware).
I am not aware of any other solution out there that can do all of the described at no cost. The only fee I can imagine is to share the feedback regarding this tool with me or any other veeam folks, but its optional XD
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@angrydok said:
I am not aware of any other solution out there that can do all of the described for not cost.
FTFY
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@scottalanmiller These Russians
Thanks! -
@angrydok Too much vodka!
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@angrydok Thanks for chiming in.
I looked into that as an option, but it has the same Microsoft licensing restrictions as all the other non-free products I was looking at.
Really the main sticking point now is the spinning up of the image to test its viability for a BMR. The workaround seems to be to actually perform the BMR in a test scenario, but I imagine your product has a virtual spinup component to it as well, right?
Though apples to apples, if I get licensing taken care of, free is surely nice.
I have moved away from desktop backups. Iwas receiving threats via PM, so I figured that was the way to go.
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@BRRABill said:
Really the main sticking point now is the spinning up of the image to test its viability for a BMR. The workaround seems to be to actually perform the BMR in a test scenario, but I imagine your product has a virtual spinup component to it as well, right?
No, Veeam is backup software, not a virtualization platform or appliance. This is a desktop focused product and would never have a virtualization component to it. It just backs you up and restores, you decide what to do.
Remember this is a full backup product, most of the use cases are not doing a BMR but restoring individual files. So the important restore use case you can test trivially anytime that you want.
If you want to do a BMR test you put another drive into the desktop that you are working with and do a restore to it and test that way.
But bottom line, no matter what products are made, don't do image restores of desktops.
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I think I may have alluded to it, but I got the pleasure of rebuilding an entire server yesterday. Our main server, which died in the middle of the afternoon.
Karma, i guess.
I'm going to eventually do a full writeup and post it in a separate thread.
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@hobbit666 said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
For example, I do a clean Windows 7 install. It doesn't have a network adapter driver. I go to hp.com and type in the model of the PC. It gives me two different options. I don't know which one is the card in my particular PC. How do I find out? The other issue is that downloading files from HP.com is just about the slowest website in the world. It can take hours.
Tip here, if you go to device manager and click on any device. Go into properties --> Details --> Select Hardware ID's. This will give you VEN and DEV numbers. Go to pcidatabase.com and put either number in and it will tell you the manufacturer and device, helps me a lot when I'm not sure what driver to get.
Thanks for this.
A list, not a forum page would be awesome for helpful weblinks like these.
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@BRRABill said:
I think I may have alluded to it, but I got the pleasure of rebuilding an entire server yesterday. Our main server, which died in the middle of the afternoon.
Karma, i guess.
I'm going to eventually do a full writeup and post it in a separate thread.
You mentioned a disaster but did not get into details.
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@scottalanmiller said:
You mentioned a disaster but did not get into details.
I posted a snippet on your RAID post. Our RAID array went poof!
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@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
You mentioned a disaster but did not get into details.
I posted a snippet on your RAID post. Our RAID array went poof!
Just saw it.
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The good news is I have everyone back up and running.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Imaging is not a good way to backup a machine because it assumes you are restoring to the same hardware. What if you need to restore to a different OS version (this could mean nothing more than different patch levels?)
Several times I have found that cloning data to different hardware is a disaster. Usually this occurs when I have different partition sizes because the disks are not an exact match. Windows flips its lid if it doesn't like the partition alignment. Things like disk queue length go down the toilet and I end up having to run a clean install in the end. Also you can end up with different chipset and network card drivers, etc.I think manufacturers started imaging with a "Recovery partition" for this very reason. Of course with Windows 8+ you can Refresh the OS on demand. In a virtualized situation this has never been a problem for me though; Only physical imaging and clones. That is my empirical experience and does not answer any of the questions the OP asked however.
To address the OP's question's:
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Your software settings are vendor specific. You would have to investigate each software individually.
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There are a ton of options to inventory software. Ideally you would do this from a central point of management.
Powershell
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Software-Inventory-using-f2870b19
OpenAudIT
https://opmantek.com-
If you have a donations database, I would first ask what is the RDBMS? If I could utilize some sort of transactional replication then it would happen.
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Virtualization\Imaging
If you have an **OEM **license it's against the terms to reuse that license by the MS Licensing terms that I know. If you have a Retail license I dont think there is any issue doing a p2v and re-using the same license to go virtual. (double check with MS on that)
I hope that is what you were asking.
thx
-d -
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@drewlander said:
- Virtualization\Imaging
If you have an **OEM **license it's against the terms to reuse that license by the MS Licensing terms that I know. If you have a Retail license I dont think there is any issue doing a p2v and re-using the same license to go virtual. (double check with MS on that)
He did and you can't because it requires VDI licensing. So you CAN if you have the additional VDI licensing, but you can't if you don't.
- Virtualization\Imaging
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@Dashrender said:
@BRRABill said:
@scottalanmiller said:
but as imaging rights for a full company are only about $120, it doesn't take much IT time saving to justify.
Is that per machine?
This is not the whole picture.
Sure Software Assurance for one workstation is $120, but if you don't have a pre existing VL agreement, it's not just $120 to get into one, or keep it going once you're in.
You have to buy at least 5 Open Value licenses to start a Volume License Agreement. To get into this with the lowest spend that would be 4 Windows Server CALs without Software Assurance ($75/ea) and 1 Workstation Software Assurance license ($120).
So the bare minimum to get started is $420, and this is good for 3 years, then you have to renew, for roughly the same cost.
Also, you can only purchase Workstation SA for computer that you acquired in the last 90 days. So if it's been more than 90 days, you would have to purchase a Workstation upgrade with Software Assurance for $115/yr from CDW or $345 for 3 years, though the renewal will be at the above stated $120 for 3 years.
Actually they have some DVD thing I recall that is less than ten bucks. Ill have to check my VLSC account ;-p. So it would be like 150.
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@scottalanmiller too less coffee, I guess.
Remember this is a full backup product, most of the use cases are not doing a BMR but restoring individual files. So the important restore use case you can test trivially anytime that you want.
I’d say its more than that. You can do a full (volume level) backup mode and then perform a Bare Metal Restore. Additionally, you can perform a file level recovery or volume level recovery within the OS.
As a bonus you can perform application item recovery from VEB backups in Veeam Backup and Replication (even in free edition). So frankly speaking, you can backup your physical AD and then restore AD object from endpoint backup thru VBR FREE and that’s for free.
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Though apples to apples, if I get licensing taken care of, free is surely nice.
Well, there is a license inside the backup indeed. We added some “additional care”, so once you perform a bare metal restore VEB that resides in the machine will kick of the windows activation in the background with the key from the backup.
In case its original hardware OEM should be pushed like a charm. To tell the truth I’ve even tested it with non-original machines – it was successfully activated from time to time, but, I guess that depends on the OEM, hardware vendor and MS licensing. (As a regular end user – I’ve tested ASUS to HP bare metal recovery with OEM windows 8.1 on board)
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@angrydok said:
Well, there is a license inside the backup indeed. We added some “additional care”, so once you perform a bare metal restore VEB that resides in the machine will kick of the windows activation in the background with the key from the backup.
In case its original hardware OEM should be pushed like a charm. To tell the truth I’ve even tested it with non-original machines – it was successfully activated from time to time, but, I guess that depends on the OEM, hardware vendor and MS licensing. (As a regular end user – I’ve tested ASUS to HP bare metal recovery with OEM windows 8.1 on board)
This is what a lot of the discussion has centered around.
It's been brought to my attention that activation is separate from licensing.
If you go from OEM to OEM, even if it activates, it is still an illegal license, since you can't image OEM. Right @scottalanmiller ?
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@BRRABill said:
@angrydok said:
Well, there is a license inside the backup indeed. We added some “additional care”, so once you perform a bare metal restore VEB that resides in the machine will kick of the windows activation in the background with the key from the backup.
In case its original hardware OEM should be pushed like a charm. To tell the truth I’ve even tested it with non-original machines – it was successfully activated from time to time, but, I guess that depends on the OEM, hardware vendor and MS licensing. (As a regular end user – I’ve tested ASUS to HP bare metal recovery with OEM windows 8.1 on board)
This is what a lot of the discussion has centered around.
It's been brought to my attention that activation is separate from licensing.
If you go from OEM to OEM, even if it activates, it is still an illegal license, since you can't image OEM. Right @scottalanmiller ?
Unless you are doing an identical hardware replacement and it is the full machine being replaced which essentially never happens. Because under what circumstance would the box be replaced legitimately under warranty or whatever? The motherboard maker cannot be changed, although HP could change how it is represented.
