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I have a server (Windows 2008 R2) with a bare metal recovery point made using Windows Server Backup tools. Everything I've read about bare metal recovery points to needing to be physically at the server (to hit F8 or insert a recovery disk). However, I'd like to be able to do this remotely because it might not be easy for me to physically reach the server.

Would it be possible to do a bare metal recovery remotely, given basic RDP tools?

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  • whats the brand of servers? Does it have an out of band management solution?
    – tony roth
    Aug 15, 2013 at 13:45
  • It's an HP. I'm not sure what you mean by out of band management solution, do you mean part of the proprietary tools on it?
    – Sean Long
    Aug 15, 2013 at 13:47
  • hp's have whats called an ilo, intergrate lights out. its a licensed product not sure what it costs. They used to have a temporary fix that you could use in an emergency but I don't know if that still exists.
    – tony roth
    Aug 15, 2013 at 13:50

1 Answer 1

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This is what the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) is for.

You perform a PXE boot of the server, and perform your bare metal restore from there. (You may need to use your ILO or DRAC or BMC to "hit" F8 or F12 as the machine boots.)

Read more about it here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd979562(v=WS.10).aspx

You could also accomplish the same thing by simply booting from the Windows installation media, (again, you can mount the ISO remotely via ILO,) and choosing "Repair my computer".

It's just nice to have WinRE ready to go on your PXE server so that it can be accessed easily by any machine in your datacenter without needing to mount the ISO locally on the machine.

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