System Blue

System Blue

Automated System Recovery (ASR) is a Windows tool used to simplify recovery of a server's system or boot volumes. ASR consists of two parts: an automated backup and an automated restore. The backup portion can be accessed in the Backup utility under System Tools.

Users can access it through the Automated System Recovery Preparation Wizard located in Backup. The ASR Preparation Wizard backs up the System State data, system services, and all disks associated with the operating system components. It also creates a floppy disk, which contains information about the backup, the disk configurations, and how to accomplish a restore.

Latest efforts from the software giants

Microsoft
Windows Vista SP1 Automated System Recovery was released in February last year.

The ASR is one of the aspects in Windows Vista that has been evolved with the introduction of Vista Service Pack-1. A Windows application programming interface, ASR is designed to keep track of and record the configuration of disks and volumes on a system. It will also manage disks in accordance with Critical and non-Critical labels, depending on whether they do or do not contain system state or operating system components.

With Windows Vista SP1, Microsoft has introduced supports for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI). As such the ASR in both Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 was tweaked in order to be capable of recovering EFI system partitions in a bare metal recovery.

IBM
IBM-Tivoli is ASR in static IP environments using Tivoli Storage Manager was introduced in November last year.

The IBM Tivoli Storage Manager Automated System Recovery Process supports Networks that are DHCP enabled. In networks that do not support DHCP and uses Static IP's, the local backup sets are used to recover these systems in case of a crash or total failure.

ASR is used to recover Microsoft Windows Server system in the event of a catastrophic system or hardware failure. The goal of ASR process is to return the operating system to the point of last backup. It is a two-phase process.

    * Microsoft Windows installs a temporary operating system image using the original operating system media.
    * Windows invokes TSM to restore the system volume and system state information.

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) interfaces with Microsoft Windows to provide system recovery.

Hewlett Packard
HP Blade PC Automated System Recovery Utility 2.00 Rev. E description was introduced earlier this year.

This package contains the Automated System Recovery (ASR-2) Service for the supported desktop models and operating systems. The ASR-2 service causes an HP Blade PC that has stopped responding (locked up), or that has experienced a "blue-screen" error, to restart (reboot), bringing it back online and making it available for network users.

Development includes the modification of the installation script to add support for 64-bit Microsoft Windows Operating Systems (Microsoft Windows XP and Microsoft Windows Vista).

Conclusion
ASR does not backup user's files or other data, it should be used only as a last resort because in preparation for a restore ASR will format the system and boot volumes of the hard-drive, making other, less drastic recovery methods impossible.

(DaNCE InSTRuMeNTaL) Blue System - Laila [DaNCE MiX InSTRuMeNTaL] (1995)