Bare metal disaster recovery: Getting your business back online
In today's highly regulated and data-driven world, downtime for critical systems can be catastrophic to an enterprise’s reputation, revenue streams and customer satisfaction. Enterprises rely on their servers to operate, and a hardware failure or a crippling cyberattack can bring everything to a halt. This is where bare metal disaster recovery comes into play. For bare metal restores it is helpful to have a pre-canned image of your entire application and platform infrastructure to capture its complete state. This image can then be used to restore the applications onto a new physical machine or even in the cloud.
What is the definition of bare metal disaster recovery?
Bare metal disaster recovery is a data recovery process and technique that allows you to restore applications, including the operating system, configurations, and data, onto a new hardware platform. Essentially, you're rebuilding your entire system using backup images taken at an earlier point in time.
This IT disaster recovery approach is ideal for situations where a complete system restoration is necessary, such as from a hardware failure or a ransomware attack.
When to use bare metal disaster recovery
Here are some key situations where bare metal recovery is essential:
- Core hardware failures: A hardware failure with the CPUs, memory motherboard, fan and cooling or even power supplies can render your server unusable. A bare metal recovery lets you swiftly get back up and running on a new machine.
- Ransomware attacks: Ransomware or other malware can leave your system encrypted and inoperable. Bare metal disaster recovery allows you to restore your applications from a last known good image on a clean hardware platform.
- Major system corruption: Severe software issues or operating system configuration errors can render your platforms unbootable. Bare metal recovery offers a way to restore a known good system state, bypassing lengthy troubleshooting processes.
- Hardware migrations: When migrating to a new server hardware platform, a bare metal recovery can streamline the process by restoring your full system and application images onto the new machine, minimizing the time your system is offline.
Here's when bare metal restore solutions might not be the best fit:
- Individual file recovery: If you only need to recover a few specific files or folders, a file-level recovery tool is a more efficient option.
- System state recovery: For situations where only the OS or specific system configurations are corrupt, a system state recovery might suffice.
- Routine backups: While bare metal recoveries offer a complete application and system restore point, it might be overkill for routine backups where you only need to restore specific data. Consider full backups for general backup purposes.
The bare metal disaster recovery process
An effective bare metal disaster recovery involves a few key steps:
Bare metal pre-recovery elements
- Regular backups: The foundation of any bare metal disaster recovery is having consistent backups of your entire system, including the OS, applications, and data. These backups should be stored securely, either on-site or off-site.
- Recovery hardware: You'll need a new server or cloud compute resources, even if it has different hardware configurations compared to the original system. While the new hardware doesn't need to be identical, it should be compatible with your software and have enough resources to run your system effectively.
- Recovery time objectives (RTOs): Knowing the allowable downtime for applications is crucial for bare metal recovery. RTOs dictate the targeted timeframe to get critical systems back up and running after a disaster.
- Configuration management databases (CMDB): Having a detailed record of hardware configurations enables an accurate restoration process onto potentially new hardware.
Bare metal recovery elements
- Automated runbooks: Unifying both people and machine tasks with automated runbooks for bare metal recoveries improves efficiency and reduces risks. With automated runbooks you can systematically deploy the backup images and data onto the new hardware to rebuild your entire system.
- System booting and verification: Once the restored image is deployed, the server should boot up with the restored operating system, applications, configurations, and data. The final step is to verify everything is functional and operational.
- Post-recovery tasks: Once the core platform is restored, there might be additional tasks such as restoring user data or verifying application functionality.
Additional things to consider with bare metal disaster recovery
Here we outline additional factors to consider when implementing bare metal disaster recovery:
- Backup maintenance: Regular backups are crucial for successful bare metal disaster recoveries. Make sure your backups are complete, recent and secure.
- Hardware compatibility: While identical hardware is not always required, ensure the new platforms meet the minimum OS and application resource requirements.
- Testing: It's vital to regularly test your bare metal recovery process to identify and address any potential issues before a real disaster strikes.
How can Cutover help in bare metal recovery?
Cutover’s automated runbooks technology helps to facilitate coordination and collaboration across IT and security teams for bare metal recoveries. They delineate specific roles and responsibilities, ensuring that all bare metal disaster recovery tasks are covered and that there is no duplication of effort. This is particularly important in complex IT environments where multiple teams are working simultaneously to restore different system components.
Cutover’s automated runbook software further supports visibility, communication, and execution with intuitive dashboards and seamless integrations with other tools across the technology stack, including IT service management, business continuity management, infrastructure as code, monitoring, and communications tools. Such integrations facilitate seamless collaboration and execution to ensure timely recovery.
Gain confidence with Cutover
To ensure your organization can recover from a ransomware attack or catastrophic hardware failure seamlessly and confidently, trust Cutover’s automated runbook software.
For our customers, Cutover has facilitated a:
- 50% reduction in application recovery execution time
- 60% reduction in the required time for regulatory audit reporting
- 70% reduction in recovery preparation time - days, instead of weeks
Our platform also offers teams the opportunity to plan, rehearse, and execute bare metal recoveries involved in ransomware attacks using detailed, intuitive runbooks that codify your bare metal disaster recovery processes. Bare metal recovery processes are enhanced via the platform’s ability to connect all relevant technology tooling and stakeholders to ensure streamlined collaboration throughout rehearsals and live recoveries.
Cutover is trusted by world-leading institutions, including the three largest US banks and three of the world’s five largest investment banks.
Book a demo of Cutover’s automated runbook platform today! Or, you can learn more about runbooks by reading our runbook guide.