Restoring the server has the following advantages and disadvantages in comparison to rebuilding the server or keeping a stand-by recovery server:
- Advantages
- You can usually restore a server faster than you can rebuild an entire server. It is faster because when you rebuild a server, you must manually install Windows 2000 Server, Exchange 2000 Server, and other applications or files.
- You can restore all configuration information for your applications such as Active Server Pages (ASP), mailbox agents, and workflow software instead of re-creating it.
- Disadvantages
- Because you are backing up most files on your computer, you need more disk space or tapes for your backup sets, and your backup jobs take longer to complete.
- You spend more time managing your backups compared to other methods.
- You can minimise this time if you automate your backups.
- Your computer operating environment is not as clean as rebuilding a server. Full computer backups back up every file on a disk drive, including any damaged files or mismatched DLLs. For this reason, rebuilding a computer can result in a cleaner computer operating environment.
- You may experience severe problems if any of the replacement hardware (for example, disk drives) on the server being restored is different than the hardware on the original server. These problems may occur because the files backed up during the full computer backup contain driver information and files specific to the hardware on the original server.
Furthermore, if you restore a full computer backup set to a computer that has a different CPU, chip set, processor, or other operating system components than the original server, you may not be able to start Windows 2000 properly.
To avoid this problem, ensure that you have replacement hardware that is identical to the hardware you are currently using, or consider using the stand-by recovery server method.
Tip To resolve these issues if they occur, start Windows 2000 in Safe Mode after you restore the full computer backup set, remove the drivers for the different hardware, restart the computer, and then allow the computer to detect the different hardware. Keep in mind that you may still experience problems integrating or installing the new drivers into your server. These problems are similar to those that many users experience when installing new hardware.
If you use the Backup utility to create a full computer backup set, you must be able to boot into Windows 2000 from that server to restore the backup. If you cannot boot into Windows from the original Windows 2000 installation, you must perform a parallel installation of Windows 2000 and restore from there.
An advantage of using disk-imaging software is that you can quickly restore an image of the Windows 2000 operating system from which you can then restore your full computer backup set.
Note If you use disk-imaging software, keep an image of your server immediately after you install Windows 2000 and any of its service packs. With that disk image, you can quickly restore a disk image that allows you to boot your server into the original Windows 2000 installation, and then use Backup to finish restoring the server using your full computer backup sets.
The information in this article applies to:
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Standard Edition
- Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Premium Edition
- Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003, Standard Edition
- Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
