Recovery Disk for Appliances How to Guide

Overview

PINsafe Hardware appliances allow an ISO image to be generated to build a new hardware appliance from new hardware, also known as a 'bare metal recovery'. The created ISO image creates a system backup at the moment of its creation. This can then be brought up to date using regular backups, see Automated FTP Backups. The CMI is not available during ISO creation.

It is recommended to create ISO images before and after any major system changes.

Prerequisites

Recovery CD Creation Prerequisites

PINsafe hardware appliance

CDROM

Writeable CD's

Recovery CD Usage Prerequisites

PINsafe Hardware appliance to be installed. Note: This must be of the same hardware type

Recovery CD's created earlier

Keyboard, Monitor attached to PINsafe Hardware appliance

Creating the Recovery CD

Create the ISO image

From the PINsafe CMI select the Option for 'Backups and Restore Options', then navigate to the create ISO image option. At the prompt Are you sure? (Yes/No): enter y

Copy the ISO images off of the Appliance

Copy the ISO images off of the hardware appliance from /backups/iso. See Copying appliance files How to Guide. There are usually two ISO images for each hardware appliance.

Burn ISO image

Use your preferred CD recording software to create a CD of the ISO image. (Ensure that the ISO image itself is not burnt onto CD but the file structure within the ISO image). Label the recovery disks as Recovery CD 1 and Recovery CD 2 as appropriate.

Repeat Process for Each hardware Appliance

Each Swivel hardware appliance will have a different configuration. Also Swivel HA Primary, HA Standby, Standalone and DR appliances have different builds so recovery CD's should be created for each appliance.

Testing Recovery CD

Ensure Recovery CD can be read.

Restoring from a Recovery CD

Install new Hardware

Install the new hardware appliance. A USB or PS2 keyboard and VGA monitor are required to view the console and select the boot options.

Boot from Recovery CD

Note: This process will overwrite any existing data on the Appliance

Insert Recovery CD 1 and power on the appliance.

The following message will appear:

 Warning: this will restore the data from the recovery disks and overwrite existing data on the PINsafe Hardware Appliance

Wait for command prompt of ‘boot:’ Type RESTORE Press enter

 boot: RESTORE

Observe install and follow any instructions. The process would normally take around 15 minutes.

Restore from latest backup

Use the CMI options to restore the PINsafe server from the latest backup. See Restore Appliance

Known Issues

The VMware image does not contain the create Recovery ISO image option. Use VMware backups and snapshots as appropriate.

Troubleshooting

If the ISO image creation terminates early, or the end OK button cannot be selected, then the Mondo file creation may appear at the CMI login. Pressing the RETURN key should allow the CMI to be accessible. To remove this message delete the file /tmp/iso.creation