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  • 1.  Is GSS able to take OS images of SCSI drive?

    Posted Oct 18, 2007 01:10 PM
    I have a couple of servers that uses RAID SCSI drives. Is GSS able to take images of off SCSI drives? If it can, I would need to buy one license per each server, correct? One more thing, GSS is currently unable to take the image of the host operating system, right? Meaning, if GSS is on server1, it is not able to take an OS image of server1, correct?


  • 2.  RE: Is GSS able to take OS images of SCSI drive?

    Posted Oct 18, 2007 07:13 PM
    Ghost has always been able to image SCSI drives and RAID arrays, but only if the manufacturer of the host controller provided suitable drivers. Most important is BIOS support (required to actually boot from the drive or array) - if this is present Ghost can use the code used to boot the drive or array to access it for taking and restoring an image. There are occasional cases where the manufacturer's BIOS support is present but incomplete and Ghost won't work, but those are rare.

    The end result is that it depends on the specific hardware you have whether the manufacturer has followed the appropriate industry standards. Support for these does vary hugely by manufacturer and from product line to product line, so it's impossible to answer the question in general without experience from someone with the same make and model of equipment.

    One additional option you may or may not have is Windows PE, especially Windows PE 2.0 (freely downloadable from Microsoft in the WAIK). Being based off Windows Vista, this does have support for a much larger range of drivers, including a number of arrays. It may be that your specific machines has storage drivers included in WinPE2 (or it may not), and if it does then you can use a Windows PE boot DVD to run the 32-bit version of Ghost.


    One more thing, GSS is currently unable to take the image of the host operating system, right?


    We can't yet take an image while the host OS is running, which is what I think you are getting at; that capability is currently the province of tools in the Backup Exec product family, like Backup Exec System Restore. You can image servers using Ghost, but you have to down the primary OS to do so.