COMP3122 Prac3: Fault Tolerant Windows 2003 Disks

Backing up and restoring data

The Backup utility helps protect data from accidental loss if the system’s hardware or storage media fails

e.g. to create a duplicate copy of the data on your hard disk and then archive the data on another storage device.

The backup storage medium can be a logical drive such as your hard disk, a separate storage device such as a removable disk, or even an entire library of disks or tapes organized and controlled by a robotic changer!

If the original data on the hard disk is then accidentally erased or overwritten, or becomes inaccessible because of a hard disk malfunction, it can be easily restored from the archived copy.

Exercise 3(a): To back up files to a file or tape

Make sure your server is working properly…

  1. Decide which folders you wish to backup. Let’s say C:/INETPUB, as an example, but you choose. Create something if you wish.
  2. To start Backup, click Start, point to All programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Backup.
  3. You could use the wizard… butclick on the Advanced Modelink.
  4. Click the Backup tab, and then on the Job menu, click New.
  5. Select the files and folders you want to back up by clicking the box to the left of a file or folder in Click to select the check box for any drive, folder, or file that you want to back up.
  6. In Backup destination, do one of the following:
  7. Choose File if you want to back up files and folders to a file. This is selected by default.
  8. Choose a tape device if you want to back up files and folders to a tape.
  9. In Backup media or file name(you may not have a choice!):
  10. as you are backing up files and folders to a file, type a path and file name for the backup (.bkf) file, or if you aren’t happy with the default, click the Browse button to find a file.
  11. (If you were backing up files and folders to a tape, and a tape was available, you could choose the tape you want to use)

8.Select any backup options you want, such as the backup type and the log file type, by clicking the Tools menu, and then clicking Options.Backup files usually have the extension .bkf. It is highly recommended that you use .bkf - file association ensures the backup file is recognizable.

9.When you have finished selecting backup options, click OK.

10. Click Start Backup, and then make any changes to the Backup Job Information dialog box.

11. To set data verification or hardware compression, click Advanced. When you have finished setting advanced backup options, click OK.

12. Click Start Backup to start the backup operation…

Exercise 3(b): Backing up “SystemState”Files

SystemState data contains most elements of a system's configuration, but it might not include all of the information required to recover a system from a failure…. Therefore, it is a good idea to back up all boot and system volumes, including the SystemState, when backing up a system

SystemState data can only be backed up on a local computer. You cannot back up the SystemState data on a remote computer.

  1. Open backup as before
  2. This time, choose system state as the location for data to be backed up
  3. Choose a location to save the data to, but this time call it system.bkf
  4. Backup as before

Exercise 3©: Backing up Encrypted Files

Only the Backup operators group and Administrators group can back up and restore encrypted files and folders without decrypting the files or folders.

  1. Create a folder, and copy some data into it.
  2. Encrypt that data
  3. Start the backup program again, choose encrypted files to save, choose a location, and save as securebackup.bkf
  4. Backup as before

Exercise 3(d): Restoring files from a file or tape

  1. Open Backup & Click the Advanced Mode link on the Backup or Restore wizard.
  2. Click the Restore and Manage Media tab, in Click to select the check box for any drive, folder, or file that you want to restore, select the files and folders you want to restore by clicking the box to the left of a file or folder.
  3. In Restore files to, do one of the following:

Click Original location if you want the backed up files and folders to be restored to the folder or folders they were in when they were backed up. Goto step 5

Click Alternate location if you want the backed up files and folders to be restored to a folder that you designate. This option will preserve the folder structure of the backed up data; all folders and subfolders will appear in the alternate folder you designate.

Click Single folder if you want the backed up files and folders to be restored to a folder that you designate. This option will not preserve the folder structure of the backed up data; the files will appear only in the folder that you designate.

4.If you selected Alternate location or Single folder, type a path for the folder under Alternate location, or click the Browse button to find the folder.

5.On the Tools menu, click Options, click the Restore tab, and then do one of the following:

* Click Do not replace the file on my computer if you do not want the restore operation to copy over files that are already on your hard disk.

* Click Replace the file on disk only if the file on disk is older if you want the restore operation to replace older files on your disk with newer files from your backup.

* Click Always replace the file on my computer if you want the restore operation to replace files on your disk regardless of whether the backup files are newer or older.

6. Click OK to accept the restore options you have set.

7.Click Start Restore. If you want to change any of the advanced restore options, such as restoring security settings and junction point data, click Advanced. When you are done setting advanced restore options click OK.

  1. Click OK to start the restore operation.

Exercise 3(e) Optimizing Disk Management for Fault Tolerance

Windows Server 2003 supports two types of disks: basic and dynamic.

Basic disks are backward-compatible - basic partitions can be accessed by previous Microsoft operating systems such as MS-DOS and Windows 95 when formatted using FAT; and when formatted using NTFS, Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows .NET Server 2003 can access them.

Dynamic disks are managed by the operating system and provide several configuration options, including software-based RAID sets and the capability to extend volumes across multiple disks. Though there are several configuration options, including spanned and stripped volumes, the only really fault tolerant dynamic disk configurations involve creating mirrored (RAID 1) volumes or RAID 5 volumes.

1.Use disk management to create an additional partition on your disk. Try to convert it to a dynamic disk…

2.Now convert the whole disk to a dynamic disk.

3. Use click and drag to increase the size of your new partition by 10 Gb.

Mirroring a Disk & Adding a UPS

Mirroring:

See youtube video:

UPS

How are UPS’s used and configured? How a backup network server can be configured to take over in the event of the main server breaking down…

Use Windows 2003 “help” to find out!

Final exercise… if time… plan your DNS zone, with a partner, and upgrade your server to a domain controller! Or you can wait until next week!

And if you are interested…

Yet More Advanced Fault-Tolerance Options

There are many other ways to add fault tolerance to network services and resources running on Windows Server 2003 servers. Plenty of third-party software is also available. The following section includes features that target fault tolerance and provides best practices for their implementation and application.

On the file-system side, in addition to proper disk management and antivirus protection, Windows Server 2003 provides Distributed File System (DFS), Volume Shadow Copy (VSC), and Remote Storage technologies.

Related to system-level fault tolerance, Windows Server 2003 includes the Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) and Network Load Balancing (NLB) technologies to provide redundancy and failover capabilities.

Exercise 3(e): Maximizing Redundancy and Flexibility on a complex network with Distributed File System

DFS provides a single unified namespace to access shared folders hosted across different servers. Because the same data can be synchronized through replication across multiple servers, there is no single point of failure for the access of the data.

Further, because a DFS root can support multiple targets physically distributed across a network, the network load for accessing particular file shares can be load-balanced rather than taxing a single server.

DFS also improves the users' experience for accessing files because the user needs to remember only a single server or domain name and share name to connect to a DFS-shared folder. Because domain-based DFS, available from Windows 2000, is published in Active Directory, the DFS namespace is always visible to users in the domain. Moreover, if a server hosting a particular share becomes unavailable, DFS will use the site and costing information in Active Directory to route the user to the next closest server.

Finally, because DFS uses NTFS and file sharing permissions, administrators can improve security of data by ensuring only authorized users have access to DFS shares.

Replication of DFS targets can now be configured via a wizard that includes a built-in topology generator. DFS is included with a default installation of Windows Server 2003.

  1. Setup begins with defining the DFS namespace.
  2. The DFS Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in eases the administration of the File Replication Service (FRS).
  3. The namespace starts with a root that maps to one or more root targets. Below the root are links that map to their own targets, which refer to shared folders on separate servers.

DFS roots can be server-based or domain-based, but they must exist on NTFS volumes.

Multiple Roots per Server

AWindows 2003 Server can contain multiple DFS roots. This feature provides an immediate server and namespace consolidation opportunity for existing Windows 2000 DFS deployments.

More importantly, it provides an opportunity to set up different DFS roots on a single server that each have unique security settings. For organisations that want to delegate administration of different DFS roots to particular organizational groups, this can now be accomplished from a single server.

A domain-based DFS root has the following format:

\\domainname\rootname.

In Active Directory environments the domain-based DFS namespace is used. This can include approximately 5,000 links. Multiple DFS targets can be created in the same domain to ensure availability.

Domain-based DFS improves Active Directory’s capability for fault tolerance. A single, standalone DFS namespace can support as many as 50,000 links. Configuration information for a server-based DFS is stored in the local Registry instead of Active Directory.

Exercise 3(f) Scheduling DFS Replication

The following best practices for DFS replication can help ensure that replication occurs as expected. Because file replication is triggered by a file version change or last-saved or modified time stamp, a standard file share might generate many replication changes, which can saturate the network bandwidth.

To avoid such scenarios, follow as many of these suggestions as possible:

  • Start with an empty DFS root folder to keep from having to replicate any data at the root level. Also, this can simplify the restore process of a DFS root folder because it contains only links that are managed by DFS.
  • Do not replicate DFS roots because the roots will try to replicate the data in the root folders plus the data contained within the link targets. Replication is not necessary if the links are already replicating. Because the roots will not replicate for redundancy, deploy domain DFS roots and add additional root targets.
  • If possible, use DFS for read-only data. When data is being replicated, FRS always chooses the last-saved version of a file. If a group share is provided through a replicated DFS link and two employees are working on the same file, each on different replica targets, the last user who closes and saves the file will have his change(s) saved and replicated over the changes of other previous saved edits.
  • Schedule replication to occur during non-peak hours to reduce network congestion. For replicating links that contain frequently changing data, this might not be possible, so to provide data redundancy in the unified namespace, create only a single target for that link and deploy it on a cluster file share. This provides server-level redundancy for your file share data.
  • Back up at least one DFS link target and configure the backup to not update the archive bit. Changing the archive bit might trigger unnecessary replication.
  • Thoroughly test server operating system antivirus programs to ensure that no adverse effects are caused by the scanning of files on a replicated DFS target.
  • Verify that the drive that will contain the staging folder for a replication connection contains ample space to accept the amount of replicated data inbound and outbound to this server.

Exercise 3(g): Simplifying Fault Tolerance with Volume Shadow Copy

When a user deletes a file and needs to recover it, they can restore from the recycle bin.

In a traditional networking environment, when that same user deletes a file on a network share, the file is gone. To restore the file, a call will be made to a help desk, an administrator will need to load a backup tape, and a restore process will ensue, which takes time… Further, if the file in question is a business critical database, the company might experience cost impacting downtime waiting for the file to be restored.

The Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) is a new technology that provides file system–based fault tolerance that does not rely on the typical backup-restore routine. Itcan perform a point-in-time backup of an entire NTFS volume, including open files, to a local or remote disk, in a very short period of time and is powerful enough to be used to restore an entire volume, if necessary. VSS can be scheduled to automatically back up a volume once, twice, or several times a day.

Volume Shadow Copy is already installed and is automatically available using NTFS-formatted volumes.It may not work with the current setup, but certainly worth a try… To configure:

  1. Click Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Computer Management.In the left pane, if it is not already expanded, double-click Computer Management (local).
  1. Click the plus sign next to Storage.
  1. Select Disk Management.Right-click Disk Management, select All Tasks, and select Configure Shadow Copies.
  1. On the Shadow Copies page, select a single volume for which you want to enable shadow copies and click Settings.
  1. The Settings page enables you to choose an alternative volume to store the shadow copies. Select the desired volume for the shadow copy. Configure the maximum amount of disk space that will be allocated to shadow copies.
  1. The default schedule for shadow copies is twice a day at 7 a.m. and 12 p.m. If this does not meet the business requirements, click the Schedule button and configure a custom schedule.Click OK to enable shadow copies on that volume.
  1. If necessary, select the next volume and enable shadow copying; otherwise, select the enabled volume and immediately create a shadow copy by clicking the Create Now button.
  1. If necessary, select the next volume and immediately create a shadow copy by clicking the Create Now button.
  1. After the shadow copies are created, click OK to close the Shadow Copies page, close the Computer Management console, and log off the server.

Restoring Data from a Shadow Copy

The server administrator or a standard user who has been granted permissions can recover data using previously created shadow copies. The files stored can only be accessed by connecting the volume that has had a shadow copy created.To recover data from a file share on a network, you would follow these steps:

  1. Click Start, Run.
  2. At the Run prompt, type \\servername\sharename, where servername represents the NetBIOS or fully qualified domain name of the server hosting the file share. The share must exist on a volume in which a shadow copy has already been created.
  3. In the File and Folder Tasks window, select View Previous Versions
  4. When the window opens to the Previous Versions property page for the share, select the shadow copy from which you want to restore and click View.An Explorer window then opens, displaying the contents of the share when the shadow copy was made.
  5. If you want to restore only a single file, locate the file, right-click it, and select Copy.Close the Explorer window.
  6. Close the Share Property pages by clicking OK at the bottom of the window.
  7. Back in the actual file share window, browse to the original location of the file, right-click on a blank spot in the window, and select Paste.
  8. Close the file share window.

VSS cannot be used on dual-boot machines. Shadow copies created within Windows Server 2003 can become corrupted when the machine is booted into an earlier Windows operating system.