VMware and Baremetal Recoveries

Responding to a server hardware failure on a critical system can be one of the most stressful and difficult positions to be in as a systems engineer. I’m convinced that hardware failures have caused half of my hair loss (with my three kids contributing to the other half and the gray that’s creeping in what’s left!). So, what is to follow is how I’ve made this a much less stressful event for myself and my organization.

About two years ago we were at a quandary for backups. We are a TSM shop and TSM did not offer the baremetal recovery we were looking for and needed in our environment. If you are like us, you have critical systems running on old hardware that you are waiting to die on you. And, like me, you know that this hardware will die at the worst possible time for everyone associated with it. Hardware is mean like that and loves to give up the ghost at the most inappropriate times. So, to counteract this, we began a search for a baremetal solution that would serve our needs and make live easy on us.

Enter UltraBac. UltraBac is one of the best baremetal solutions for backing up servers I have ever seen. It integrates with TSM, has excellent customer support, and has saved IT bacon on multiple occasions. In the past year on three separate occasions we have used UltraBac to load a baremetal copy of a server on a VMware baseline server. Each time we have gotten the server up an running VMware in a 1/3 of the time it would normally have taken AND each time performance on the new virtual server for the failed server was deemed to be superior to what it had been on the physical server. One of those occasions we loaded involved a business critical SQL server that netted us a pat on the back for both improving performance and system reliability from the team that used the server.

What surprises me about this is that UltraBac seems to have a relatively small footprint in the market. For such an awesome product, this shocks me. Although, I can see this when I step back and take a look because there are multiple offerings for baremetal restore technology available.

So, if you are looking for a very nice baremetal solution, take a look at what UltraBac has to offer. We have certainly loved the product and continue to protect our systems with it.