Server 2016
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I wanted to see if anyone has had any experience using FOG to image Server 2016. I looked at Operating Systems that can be imaged with FOG at the link below, but I didn’t see any reference to 2016. I saw some for 2003 and 2008, so I was assuming I could just choose a Windows 10 image, and should be good from there? Just wanted to see if will work. Thanks.
https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php?title=What_Operating_Systems_can_be_imaged_with_FOG%3F
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@towndrunk said in Server 2016:
I was assuming I could just choose a Windows 10 image, and should be good from there?
I think that should work fine. The only potential problems you might have is with RAID if you’re imaging a server that has RAID.
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It has RAID, and I believe we had it configured for a RAID 1. If I do Windows 10, Multiple Partition image, single disk (not resizable), you think it may cause issues? Of course I don’t have another box with the same hardware to restore it to and test. Even if worse case scenario was to restore this image to a single disk, I would be happy. That I can test though.
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@towndrunk said in Server 2016:
Of course I don’t have another box with the same hardware to restore it to and test. Even if worse case scenario was to restore this image to a single disk, I would be happy.
Might I ask how/why are you using fog if you don’t happen to have other hardware to clone it to? Are you by chance using fog as a backup tool?
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@george1421 We are making an image of the server in case of hard drive or software failure. It took us, working with the Vendor for the application this is going to support, about 2-3 weeks to get it all up and working. If something we to fail, we would like to have an image to restore to similar hardware. The only portion of the hardware that I don’t currently have is the RAID card. If I had another, I could test the restore process. I’m not willing to try it on the current install, just to see if it works.
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@towndrunk well I can see two paths for you.
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You need to configure the FOS engine to look for raid cards. Remember that FOS is “intended” to be a workstation imaging tool (one to many). Its not “intended” to be a backup tool. You can go this route, with a bit of debugging get it to work. FOS (the customized linux os that caputres and deploys images) does understand and support raid cards as long as if the hardware isn’t so new where there are not linux kernel drivers for the hardware, and you enable the raid function.
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Use a third party product like Veeam Backup Agent (free) to make backups of systems. This would create a DR backup as well as on going incremental backups. Its a really nice tool.
If you want to go down the FOG route then you have a little debugging to do. I can guide you down that path to see if its even possible.
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@george1421 We currently use Veeam Backup, and I was going to make another backup with that later. It is just that the other employees in the office understand how to use FOG, where they don’t necessarily understand Veeam the same way. I was just trying to make it easier for them.
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@towndrunk Understand that I’m talking about the Veeam backup agent not Veeam B&R. These are two different products, But they can work together very well. The FOG backup agent is used to backup physical machines to a local disk, CIFS share, or to your Veeam B&R server. It works much like any normal backup tool. From the local machine you can launch a backup or restore a file.
If you want to go the raid imaging route we can do that too. For YOUR raid system you will follow pretty much the raid document I create… 2 years ago (dang) for the intel built in fake-raid controller.
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/7882/capture-deploy-to-target-computers-using-intel-rapid-storage-onboard-raidBefore I start this, I do have to say that FOG has not been tested to see if it can backup, or even restore a windows 2016 OS. I suppose I could test that in my home lab, but at this point I don’t know if the following process will be able to produce a viable system upon restore.
What you will do is this:
- Register that server with FOG.
- Go into the host properties for this 2016 server and add in these kernel properies:
mdraid=true - Now schedule a capture or deploy (does not matter, we are going to do neither), but before you hit the schedule task button, tick the checkbox to debug.
- PXE boot the target system. After a few key presses you will be dropped to a linux command prompt (FOS) on the target computer.
- Kind of follow part 3 of the document I linked to find out if mdraid can see your array and what its called. It probably won’t be called md126
