System Rebuilt

[BMW]

Hi,

I just made ERDs for all my NT4 servers. I would like to know, in the event of server rebuilt, what other drivers do I need? How do I prepare for it? Should I make a copy of the NIC driver on the floppy disk?

Please advise!

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Most manufacturers put the latest drivers for servers on their website.

However, I usually keep all of the disks that come with a server in a locked cupboard as a matter of course.

If you need to rebuild a server, you will need:

ERD/Boot floppy (Boot floppy is more useful in case of either a full rebuild or a network restore from backup archive).
SCSI/RAID drivers
Video drivers (optional really - you could just use the standard SVGA driver, since it's only a server).
NIC drivers


Hope this helps

 

[Voyager1]

Good advice, CE. Just one thing in addition: When you create an ERD on a Domain Controller, make sure you use "RDISK /S" instead of just RDISK. This gets more information from the SAM database that can be restored in the event of a disaster. - Bill

"You can get anything you want out of life, if you'll just help enough other people get what they want" - Zig Ziglar

 

[skar]

One other point. Ensure you have a regular FULL backup of your servers. That way when disaster strikes you will only need a handfull of tapes.
It happended to me. No full backup for over 3 months only differental. The restore requested 27 tapes! What a long weekend that was.

 

[wybnormal]

I have found that a "cleaner" way to back up NT4 is to use something like Veritas intelligent recovery. It's an option for BackupExec and you make 4 floppies and snapshot the server+data to tape.. it's like Ghost on steroids. If and when the server dies, you boot off the floppies which contain a stripped kernal + BE and drivers. Insert the tape and let it rip. Presto.. NT back with the config snapshoted. I have used this to rebuild a server from ground up in less then 1 hour.. beats fdisking, loading NT, loading drivers, load BE etc...etc...etc.

Mike S
"Diplomacy; the art of saying 'nice doggie' till you can find a rock" Wynn Catlin