Hi,

I want some information regarding Ghost image of servers and clients ABB 800xA.

Our system is is having 10 clients and server with redundancy. So we have two connectivity, two aspect servers and 10 clients. I remember during commissioning we asked ABB engineer about the ghost image and as per him we need ghost image of all nodes.

My questions are

1) Is is not possible to make ghost image of only one client PC which could be used in case any other client fails/crashes, By using the IP address of that PC?

2) Can we have a single ghost image for connectivity server which could be used for any of the connectivity server in case of failure? And similar to aspect servers also?

In such condition I will have only three ghost images instead of 14 now.

 

No, its not so simple....

Yes, it is theoretically possible to recover your system with only a backup of 1 aspect server, 1 connectivity server, 1 domain server (if you have a domain) and 1 workstation. But it will be time consuming and vulnerable to error.

1. You MUST have a valid backup of your ASPECT servers. These contain your 800xA configuration. Everything else can be recovered somehow, but your aspect servers are key.

2. The server and workstation computers are similar, but are not exact clones of each other. If you have only one workstation backup, then there are several steps you must do to change the identity of a workstation. You need to change much more than just the IP address. Unless you are familiar with adding and removing nodes from a domain or workgroup then this is not a simple task. Also, if you clone a server you may need to modify registry settings and delete cache files when recreating the server with a new system identity.

3. All of these steps take time, and will add hours and most importantly, <b>significantly increased risk of failure</b> when you try to recover the system.

4. If your system runs on a Domain, then you must have a valid backup of your domain controllers. If your backup is older than around 60 days (known as the tombstone time), then recovering a windows domain is a very difficult task.

Also, be aware that the scheduled ABB system backup (in the maintenance structure) can only recover a <b>complete</b> 800xA system onto an <b>identical</b> server and workstation configuration. It is a very limited system recovery function.

Finally, "Ghost" is rather outdated backup system and requires that your server be shut down to take an image. I think ABB now recommend "Acronis", and this is the backup software we recommend at all our customer sites. Scheduled acronis backups of your systems do not require any servers to be shut down and need minimal intervention to keep your backups up to date. Unfortunately it is rather expensive (you pay per server, clients are very cheap), but well worth it.

TL;DR - Unless you want to run the risk of not recovering properly after a failure, backup everything, every week.

Rob
www[.]lymac.co.nz