Full Server Backup

[kanrenbrad]

Hello All,

I’m looking to upgrade from 10.4.10 to 10.5 but I’m a bit skiddish… in the past I’ve always done a complete format and reinstallation of the OS then reconfigure the services the way I expected them (OS upgrades basically became a way to audit settings). This time I don’t have that luxury since there are too many files and services to reconfigure/move.

My server has a RAID1 array with two 500GB HDDs. I have an additional Firewire 500GB external drive. I would like to clone the entire contents of the RAID array onto the Firewire drive so that I could boot the machine from the Firewire drive if all else fails. I figure this will mean some heavy hitting with ASR but I’ve never worked much with that application.

My questions:
1) Once I shut down all services on the server, can ASR run from the active drive or do I need to install OSX on the Firewire drive, reboot from the external drive, then create the image from the internal HDDs … OR… can I simply create an exact copy of the internal HDD to the external drive while booted from the internal HDD?

2) Are there any special ASR commands you would suggest using to create the image/backup? I’m not running any special 3rd party apps…. only stuff like Mailman, Postfix, Apache, etc (ie: stuff that shipped with the server OS).

Thanks very much for any suggestions, insights, or information you can provide!

[effects]

You should be able to boot from your install disk and run ARD for your backup. You might also look into carbon copy cloner. It is a very good program with detailed instructions on its site. The site can be found here http://bombich.com/

David

[Author]

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