Bare Metal Restore: Achieving Rapid Deployment and DR

What is bare metal restore?

Bare metal restore is the process of restoring data to a machine from scratch, usually without the operating system installed on it and it is also called bare metal recovery and short for bmr.

After you perform a bare metal restore, you can completely restore data like operating system, applications, and other data to a machine. Because it helps skip OS installation and save time, it is considered as a good solution for disaster recovery.

There is a relevant concept of it, bare metal backup, which is easy to understand. It involves creating a complete image of the operating system including OS files, applications, configurations, and other data.

A primary backup and restore solution might only backup the machine at a file level and there is no significant difference from USB backup or data copying, while bare metal backup and restore solution is an advanced backup solution but it often requires professional bare metal restore software like Vinchin Backup & Recovery.

Why you need bare metal restore and when to use it?

Because bare metal restore can effectively restore both operating system and applications, it will be useful in disaster recovery and system deployment.

Here are some scenarios when you need it:

Repair operating system: It is common to have system failure in companies’ IT system. If it is hard to diagnose the causes or perform repair, just recover it completely with bare metal restore.

Recover from hardware failure: Hard drive failure might cause data loss and stop you from writing data to it so after you change the hard drive, you can perform bare metal restore to recover both OS and applications.

Recover from ransomware attack: After being targeted by ransomware, you can clear the infected appliances and redeploy the IT environment, where bare metal restore will help save your time.

Deploy the test environment: It will be quick to deploy the test environment and get unlimited replicas of it with bare metal restore.

System migration: Bare metal restore will help copy the system so it can be useful when the system is needed on another machine or after the old appliances are upgraded.

Advantages and disadvantages of bare metal restore

There are some benefits of it but bare metal backup is not always satisfying and it also has drawbacks.

Advantages:

Comprehensive recovery: It restores the whole machine including operating system, applications, configurations, and other data so you can directly use the machine.

Faster disaster recovery: Because it doesn’t require an operating system installed on the machine and lets you directly boot the machine it saves a lot of time and simplify the procedures to avoid other errors in the process.

Easy operation: Because it requires less configuration, it will be easy to perform a bare metal restore.

Fix all kinds of issues: It is similar to system installation as it addresses and fixes system settings, configurations, and even application-related issues.

Disadvantages:

Compatibility issues: The utilization of bare metal restore looks simple but actually there are also requirements for hardware. It could be easy to restore the data backup to the original machine but when you restore data to dissimilar hardware, there might be compatibility issues.

Too much influence: Bare metal restore will totally restore the system so it means your other applications will be overwritten.

However, bare metal still has more advantages than disadvantages.

How to perform a bare metal restore with Vinchin Backup & Recovery?

As mentioned before, a professional bare metal restore software is often needed to perform a bare metal restore on the machine so you can use Vinchin Backup & Recovery, an enterprise backup solution, to backup and restore appliances in IT environment.

It will be easy to back up the Windows machine with a user-friendly web console.

Just select the Windows/Linux server, workstation, or PC > select backup destination to store the backup data > select backup strategies like schedule and incremental backup > submit the job

The operating system and applications will be backed up to let you perform a bare metal restore to the original machine or dissimilar hardware later.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery can also help backup other appliances and applications like virtual machine, NAS, database, file, etc. It has been selected by thousands of companies and you can also start a 60-day full-featured free trial here. Also, contact us, leave your requirements, and then you will receive your tailored solution. We have established partnerships with reputable companies all over the world so if you would like to do a local business, you can select a local partner here.

Sum Up

Bare metal restore helps quickly deploy new machine without installing operating system separately and repair problematic system by totally replacing it so companies can use it for rapid IT environment deployment and disaster recovery.

Also, you need bare metal restore software, so don’t miss the free trial of Vinchin Backup & Recovery.