Discovered a system on its lips last week. Just recovered it successfully from a backup, albeit older due to MS taking it upon themselves to reset some custom firewall settings. Thank you to the folks who have worked hard to make the backup/restore process reliable.
I thought I’d share the basic procedure we’ve used multiple times, as there are some little tricks that make it go much faster/smoother.
Preface: Some of this is specific to Windows Server (Hyper-V and IIS/FTP) environments…
- We always restore to the same major version as the crashed system. So download the ISO, create a new VM, and do the basic setup. Do NOT activate at this time.
- Yum update and reboot.
3.Login to the GUI. Do not activate. Update modules until all are current. - On the new system, run a local backup. This is required to create the directory where it will look for files to restore later.
- Use WinSCP to copy the backup file from which we will restore to /var/spool/asterisk/backup/Default_backup. Again, this directory will not exist until a local backup is run.
- Chmod the backup file you just coped to 777 (we use WinSCP to do this).
- Modify postfix to not use IPv6 (pretty sure this change is not included in backups).
- Shut down the broken system (if it’s running).
- Shut down the new system.
- Copy the MAC from the broken system to the virtual NIC on the new system. This will result in the new system getting the correct IP via DHCP.
- Start the new system.
- Login to the GUI and restore from local backup. Make sure to choose the file you uploaded (there will be two files). Also make sure to check all boxes.
- Login to portal.sangoma.com and unlock the activation for the broken install. Note the deployment ID.
https://wiki.freepbx.org/display/FPG/How+to+Move+a+Deployment+ID+to+a+new+PBX - Go to System Admin and follow the prompts to activate. Choose the option to use an existing deployment ID.
- Apply the config and then go through the module update process again.
Again, we’re grateful to everyone who has working on the Backup/Restore module to make it what it is now- something that admins can rely on in an emergency.