If your systems fail due to a hardware fault, software problem, or ransomware attack, you may need to rebuild it on to new hardware.  

If you’ve got a solid disaster recovery (DR) plan in place, great. But if you’re considering recovering your system manually, the process might be a lot more complex than you think.  

Here’s the harsh reality of recovering your system manually, and how you can protect it in the future with Cristie BMR software. 

How to recover a system manually  

If your systems go down, chances are you’ll lose more than your data; you’ll lose the systems needed to run that data as well. And don’t forget that in many cases, your infrastructure (such as your servers and the disk/storage required to access the data), form part of your DR audit requirements.  

While it’s not impossible to recover your systems manually, you’ll need a specific skillset in managing operating systems, applications, network and storage – as well a lot of time.  

Typically, a full manual rebuild of a server with applications will take anything from two to eight hours, in addition to the time needed to restore the data. What’s more, manual recoveries tend to be unplanned, meaning you’ll be working against the clock in what might well be a highly stressful situation.  

What’s needed to start a manual system restore? 

Thinking about a manual restore? First, ask yourself whether you have the physical hardware and access to the appropriate virtual or cloud system needed to take the first step.  

Manual restores need a combination of the right resources with the right skills, and you need to be prepared too. Every minute lost while you run around trying to download software, your installation media and drivers could be costing you potential revenue – as well as your company’s reputation.  

How to restore your system manually  

Let’s look at a manual restore step by step. 

To start with, you’ll need to identify the system to install on (physical, virtual or cloud). 

Bear in mind that if it’s virtual or cloud you’ll need to manually create the VM, manually install the OS and run any patch updates, before moving on to locating install media for any applications. 

You’ll then need to verify that these application versions work with the OS version installed, before moving on to installing the recovery software and other programmes and applications. Finally, you can start to restore your data. 

 Next, the machine name and IP address information will need to be changed before it’s up and running again – and there’s no guarantee that you won’t have more problems after that.  

A manual recovery is a complex and time-consuming operation; so compare it with the 10 to 15 minutes needed for a recovery with dedicated BMR software. 

Cristie BMR software for your system recovery 

In contrast, using Cristie BMR software provides a simple to use tool to recover your whole system to any hardware, virtual or cloud platform. 

Our software creates a machine configuration file which is saved with the backup. This configuration file contains all the information required to prepare for recovery on any comparable target.  

We’ll recover your system as a clone of the original system in one hit, including a point in time recovery. Which means there’s no running about trying to find software; everything you’ll need is contained in the backup.  

If you’re recovering to different hardware, we’ll take care of all the new driver injection. And if you’re recovering into virtual or cloud, we can fully automate the creation of the VM with the same CPU, RAM and disk that was available on the original physical machine. 

Finally, when you use our BMR software, you’ll also benefit from our customer support. There’ll always be someone on the end of the phone, ready to help you.  

To find out more about Cristie BMR software, click here. To book a free trial of any of our software products, click here.