Couple Questions

[mainmast]

1) I have a server with two RAID arrays. One Array is two SCSI drives in a RAID 1 and the other is four SCSI Drives in RAID 5. I got in today to find the server totally crashed and tried to bring it up for hours on end trying everything from chkdsk to emergency repair to whatnot. To make sure it wasn't a hardware problem, I had taken out all the drives and popped in a spare emergency SCSI drive to boot to. When I was done with that I inserted the old two SCSI drives back into their previous spots (in the correct order) and it automatically started to scrub them! In the end this is what I wanted to do - but I don't think it should of started to scrub them automatically.

Now, I still have the other four drives out (the RAID 5). How can I put them back in the remaining slots (correct order, etc) and make sure it doesn't scrub them on boot? Those are the important discs... they have all the data.

2) This rebuild is the 2nd time in 2006. What kind of backup software do you all use for server backup? Basically what I want to do is create a -complete- backup of BOTH my arrays and store it on a storage server every night automatically. Then I want to be able to just stick a CD in or something and boot to a recovery program and restore that backup automatically (to the correct array, restore Active Directory SIDs, domain, DNS, etc). Is there such a program?

 

[tangostar]

Is this a hardware RAID solution? I assume it is.
The manufacture probably has a boot cd for managing the arrays.

As for backups traditionally people backup to tape.
If a complete restore is necessary you rebuild, reinstall the OS probably reload the software and then reload the data off of the tapes.

We on the other hand started useing VMWARE and it is awsome. You can use a script called vmbk to backup a collection ofcomplete servers and restore them in minutes to hours instead of days.