Today’s Quick Tip focuses on performing Bare Metal Restores with LVM. The value of BMR for disaster recovery is well known, but Linux LVM adds additional complexity to the solution so a more automated solution is key for many of our customers.

Many of our customers that run Linux see value in an automated process for backing up and restoring their LVM configurations, prior to performing a BMR. Starting in CDP 3.18 on Enterprise and Advanced Editions, this Linux LVM BMR process is automated through an on screen wizard. If you are restoring your system partition, you will need to boot your physical or virtual machine from either Live CD or PXE Network Boot. The automated BMR process can then be accessed through the CDP 3.0 web interface by selecting the BMR option for the disk safe associated with your chosen recovery point.

The Bare Metal Restore wizard will guide you through the following steps:

1) Choose the filesystem(s) to be restored

2) Select the host (use the IP address and port of your Live CD or PXE Boot Environment)

3) Define Restore Storage Configuration (this includes partition settings, choosing software RAID devices to restore, and setting up LVM Volume Groups to restore)

4) Map Filesystems

5) Select Restore options

6) Start the Restore process

You can monitor the status of the restore process through the Task History option within CDP 3.0.

Get complete instructions, including screenshots, in our wiki.

Have questions about this Quick Tip or any of our high-performance CDP backup products? Connect with us on Twitter: R1Soft

We have found an issue with our current build (3.18.0) and we are taking it offline while we investigate and correct the issue. It should be available once again next week. Stay tuned to this blog or Twitter for further details.

Thanks for your patience.

*Update: CDP 3.18.1 is now available for download. More details to come via email update next week, or get a jump on the 3.18.1 release with details from our wiki.

Today’s Quick Tip focuses on restoring MySQL instances more efficiently in CDP 3.0.  This is a key desire of many of our customers who need to restore a large number of databases.

*Please note that this quick tip assumes you have the MySQL for CDP add-on enabled, as it is needed to lock and flush tables before a MySQL backup takes place.

If you are restoring an entire MySQL instance, it is more efficient to perform a file restore of the MySQL data directory than to restore databases individually. When databases are restored individually (see Restoring a MySQL Database), each row must be selected and inserted and this can take a long time.  In this case, we recommend shutting down your MySQL instance and restoring your MySQL data directory using the file restore feature (see Restoring Files).

We recommend following the following 5 steps to restore an entire MySQL instance:

1)     Identify the MySQL data directory

2)     Stop the MySQL instance

- Windows users use the Windows MySQL Administrator utility OR type net stop MySQL at a command prompt
- Linux users type the following command: /etc/init.d/mysql stop
- Linux users type /etc/init.d/mysql start

3)     Move the contents of the data directory to another location as a backup just in case (best practice)

4)     Use CDP to perform a file restore of the MySQL data directory

5)     Start the MySQL instance

- Windows users use the Windows MySQL Administrator utility OR type net start MySQL at a command prompt

Get complete instructions including screenshots in our wiki.

Have questions about this Quick Tip or any of our high-performance CDP backup products? Connect with us on Twitter: R1Soft

Today’s Quick Tip focuses on recovery of lost passphrases for encrypted Disk Safes on CDP 3.0 Enterprise and Advanced editions.

Today’s Quick Tip focuses on backup and restore of individual cPanel accounts with CDP 3.0 Enterprise and Advanced editions.

You can restore the entire state of your WHM server and all cPanel accounts from a CDP recovery point by restoring all files or performing a BMR. However, you may occasionally need to restore individual cPanel accounts; possible scenarios include when a cancelled customer decides he wants to reactivate, or if there were accidental changes made to any of the account’s configurations in cPanel. What can you do in this case?

Create periodic cPanel account packages that get protected by CDP

Use the script (provided here with instructions) to create a package of all your cPanel accounts excluding the /home directory files. The resulting configuration backup will be placed in: /home/cpmove-USERNAME.tar.gz and will be automatically backed up by CDP as long as you have selected the /home file system or disk in your Disk Safe for protection.

Restore individual cPanel accounts when needed

1. Use CDP (as the server administrator) to restore the file /home/cpmove-USERNAME.tar.gz to an alternate location (e.g. /tmp)
2. Login to the cPanel server using SSH and run: # /scripts/restorepkg –force /tmp/cpmove-USERNAME.tar.gz
3. Restore the contents of the /home/USERNAME using CDP file restore

Get the script and review detailed directions in our wiki.

Have questions about this Quick Tip or any of our high-performance CDP backup products? Connect with us on Twitter: R1Soft

Big news from the R1Soft Support Team:

In a continuing effort to improve the R1Soft customer support experience, we have launched a new Customer Support Portal that will help you find the information you are looking for, open and manage cases, and access the R1Soft Wiki and the R1Soft Community Forum, all from one web page.

Some important notes on the new portal:

If you are an existing customer -

- You should have received your new login credentials via email on 9/12 or 9/13. (Searching your inbox? Look for the sender support-inbound (at) r1soft dot com.)

- If you did NOT receive your new login info, reset your password using the “Forgot Password” link on the Support home page. (Having trouble? Try clearing your cache before resetting).

- Good news!: Your case history will be available to you in the new portal.

If you are a NEW customer -

- Please register for your support account

Over the coming weeks, the Support team will continue to make refinements to the portal. Any new features or changes will be noted in the wiki article on the subject. You can also follow R1Soft on Twitter for the latest.

We thank you for your patience during the launch period!!

HostingCon 2011 may have come and gone (*tear*), but we have one last piece of business to take care of – picking our NOOK Color giveaway winner! We got to connect with a lot of great folks in San Diego, but there’s only one NOOK to award this go-around. the lucky winner of our 2011 HostingCon giveaway is….drumroll, please… Rick Lingsch of eApps! Congrats, Rick!

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by our booth. We look forward to seeing you all next year!

Today’s Quick Tip focuses on the steps involved in restoring Windows Dynamic and Logical disks in CDP 3 Enterprise and Advanced Editions.

There are 6 key steps to restore Windows Logical and Dynamic disks in CDP 3:

Restoring Windows Logical Disks: Learn More

Restoring Windows Dynamic Disks: Learn More

Today’s tip focuses on exporting files from a recovery point in CDP 3.0. This option is available with CDP release 3.12 and forward.

Beginning with CDP release 3.12 and forward, you can download a zip or tar archive file containing your Recovery Point data. After downloading the archive file, you can extract files or store the archives for future use.

Here are the steps to export files from a Recovery Point:

1) Login to the CDP Web interface and select Recovery Points from the main menu.

2) Select the relevant Disk Safe from the Recovery Point list toolbar.
> Enterprise Edition users will need to select the relevant Agent and then the disk safe.
> Advanced and Standard Edition users just need to select the disk safe.

3) Select the Browse option next to the Recovery Point of interest.

4) Check the boxes next to the files and folders you want to export within an archive.

5) Using the “Download Stored Files” wizard, proceed with your download. You can specify zip, tar, tar compression with gzip, and filename as part of the process.

Review the directions, including step-by-step screenshots and commands, in our wiki.

Have questions about this Quick Tip or any of our high-performance CDP backup products? Connect with us on Twitter: R1Soft