by Alex Stoev, Vault USA Director of Technology

Imagine this: a five-year-old server that has just crashed is restored to a brand new piece of equipment.  That is the power of Bare Metal Restore (BMR).

BMR is a form of restore wherein not only the data, but the entire machine is restored including System State (Registry). It’s that simple. Of course, the processes behind the scenes are quite complex, especially if we are restoring to different supported hardware.

What do we need in order to be able to restore the whole machine, including server, desktop, and laptop? We need to have a full backup of that machine, and we need to have the target machine visible on the network.  We simply mark that machine as our target, provide credentials, and click finish.

Our target doesn’t have to be the same Operating System (OS) (as long as the target OS is from the same family as the source) service pack level, IP address, or even have the same users. Once the restore is complete, we just reboot the restored box, and the old server with all its settings and programs are running on the new hardware.