TABLE OF CONTENTS If there is one rule in Information Technology (IT), it is that sooner or later you are going to need a backup copy of a server to perform a restore. Whether it s an upgrade that goes bad, corruption of key operating system (OS) files from hardware failure, or simply rolling out a number of identical servers, using smart backup strategies can drastically reduce the downtime required by any of these tasks.
In this chapter, we address several popular methods of disaster recovery (DR) for your Citrix servers. We also address using these techniques for server rollout, and for assisting you in an upgrade strategy. Citrix has some very specific requirements for successful server cloning, and there are some definite gotchas to be aware of before trying it. We also cover specific scenarios for backing up and restoring the most critical aspect of your Citrix environment, the data store.
One popular term that is tossed around in the IT world is cloning. No, we aren t talking about making mutant sheep here. A server clone is just that, an identical copy of an existing server. At the heart of it, you are making a copy of the software on one server and restoring it to another server. Advantages to server cloning include:
Quick recovery of downed hardware
Free tools provided with the OS for server cloning
Fairly painless process to create and restore a cloned image
Popular third-party software support for server imaging and cloning
There are a...
