How To Configure a Bootable USB drive for bare metal recovery (SBAdmin v6) Print
Using Storix SBAdmin it is possible to use a dedicated hard disk for full system backup and recovery. On the Linux x86 platform it is becoming more and more common to add additional disks via USB.
This how-to will walk through the steps necessary to create a bootable USB disk, and utilize it for Storix full system recovery. The disk may then be used to recover the original system or migrating the system to new hardware. Note that this how-to is to be used with SBAdmin version 6.x.

Prerequisites

  • Linux system running on X86 hardware (capable of booting from a USB device)
  • SBAdmin installed and configured as a server
  • A USB hard disk or flash based storage device (*note all data on the disk will be removed)

Creating a bootable USB drive for bare metal recovery

Determinine the attached drive

**For this example the USB disk will be refered to as sda, please note if you are running internal scsi or sata disks sda may be a system disk. Make sure to properly identify your removeable disk before making any changes**

Most USB hard drives and flash drives come  pre-formatted. In order to use the drive for full system recovery with Storix we will need to remove all partitions from the disk using the fdisk utility. This process will erase ALL DATA on the disk!

First, make sure any filesystems on the USB disk are not mounted.
(The following output shows partition 1 of sda mounted on media disk)

#df
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb1              5039560   2442444   2341112  52% /
none                    440760         0    440760   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1              7810152         4   7810148   1% /media/disk

If your USB disk is mounted, use the umount command to unmount it.
 

#umount /media/disk

 

Note, If the disk is defined in /etc/fstab Storix will not dedicate the disk for system recovery. 

Using Storix to configure the disk for system backup

Open the Storix graphical interface by running the following command.

#sbadmin &

From the graphical interface select Configure > Servers .
 
For the Server Hostname or IP use the drop down to select the server with the USB drive attached. (For this example the hostname is stitch)
 
Now select the Configure System Backup Disk(s) Button.
 
 
On the Configure Disk(s) for System Backup/Recovery screen use the dropdown menu to select our USB disk.
 
The default mount point Storix will use is /backups/system , if the server has been configured to write backups somewhere else, you may enter the path here.
 
By default, Storix will select to use LVM when configuring the disk. When using USB disks it is often preferable to use a partition based disk. Choose the option Partition (1 disk max) .
 
 
 
Press the Configure button and you will see one last warning that all the data on the disk will be overwritten. Choose Yes and the disk will be made into a Storix backup disk.
 

Make the USB disk bootable

In order to use the disk as bootable media, Storix will need to write a bootloader and kernel to the disk. To do so return to the "Configure Server" window. Select Configure > Server from the main window.

Now choose the Configure System Install Boot Disk button.

The "Configure System Installation Boot Media" window will appear.

In the Device name field, use the drop down menu to select the USB disk.

By default Storix will auto populate the rest of the fields with the approperiate information about the running kernel.

Press the Create/Update button and the the disk will be made bootable.

To test the disk, you may want to reboot the machine pointing the bios to this removeable disk. You should see the Storix installation menus and have the ability to select any full system backups that have been written to the disk.

Conclusion

With the ability of restoring to different hardware and dedicating a USB disk for both system backups and boot media. SBAdmin not only allows for easy backups over the network, but the ability to take backups and boot media off the network or offsite for recovery into a disaster recovery environment.
 

References