Bare Metal Recovery Using 1-Touch for Linux

Introduction

The Commvault1-Touch recovery solution, often referred to as Bare Metal Recovery is used to quickly recover a failed computer. By automatically rebuilding the operating system, you can recover systems with defective components such as inaccessible volumes or failed disks without the need to manually reinstall the individual software packages or operating systems.

This feature is available on various UNIX platforms. Depending on client environment, you can use the CommCell Console or the 1-Touch wizard to run the recovery process. The 1-Touch recovery process secures the required information from the client's backup and then uses this information to re-create the client environment.

Linux clients do not require a 1-Touch server. The required information for 1-Touch recovery is available on the CommServe and the Linux Live CD.

Determine Whether Your Environment Supports 1-Touch Server

Use the following table to determine whether your environment supports 1-Touch Server:

Scenarios	AIX	FreeBSD	Linux
Is 1-Touch Server required?	Yes. For instructions, see Deployment - 1-Touch for AIX.	NA	1-Touch Server is not required.
Can you install the 1-Touch Server on a virtual machine?	Yes	NA	NA

Key Features

The 1-Touch Recovery involves the following key features:

Fully Unattended Operating System Reinstall

You can initiate the recovery process of a single or multiple clients from a central location, such as the CommServe. This will be useful for UNIX clients when you want to reinstall the operating system on all the clients connected to a CommServe.

Point-in-Time Restore

Using the 1-Touch recovery solution, you can restore the system state of a client using the specific date and time when the system state backup was performed.

Support for Block-Level Backups on Linux Clients

On Linux clients, you can perform a recovery operation from block-level backups. Restores from block-level backups are faster. In addition, data integrity is ensured because block-level backups take a snapshot of the entire volume.

Cross Hardware Restore

Cross hardware restores are supported with the following limitations:

AIX	Restores are supported across machines with same CPU architecture; P-series machine to P-series machine. The target disk must be of the same size or bigger than the source disk. The number of disks on the target machine can be more than that of the source machine.
Linux	Restore from a BIOS machine to a UEFI machine is not supported. Software RAID (mdadm) is supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x, SuSE Linux 12.x, and Ubuntu 16.x operating system versions. For specific operating system versions, see 1-Touch for Linux: System Requirements. Fake RAID or vendor-specific implementations of software RAID are currently not supported. The target disk must be of the same size or greater than the source disk.
Solaris	Restores are supported across machines with same CPU architecture. The target disk must be of the same size or bigger than the source disk. The number of disks on the target machine can be more than that of the source machine. If the source and the target machines have different device paths, the Commvault^® software assigns disks on a best-effort basis. If the device paths do not match, then a disk that can hold all partitions on the source disks is selected from the list of target disks. If more than one disk matches this criteria, the first usable drive from the list is selected. The target machine must have at least one network interface in the same subnet as that of the primary network interface on the source machine.

Terminology

The 1-Touch documentation uses the following terminology:

Client	A computer that has the File System iDataAgent installed on it.
1-Touch Server	A server that is used for 1-Touch recovery of clients.
Live CD	A CD used to boot the client for 1-Touch recovery.
Asymmetric Disk Restore	This term is used in 1-Touch recovery of UNIX clients. When the disk configuration of the restored system is different than that of the backed up system, you need to perform the Asymmetric Disk Restore.
ISO Image	This is a file that contains all the information required to initiate the 1-Touch recovery. Use this file to create the Live CD.
Answer File	The client answer file contains information such as the computer name, operating system, IP address, and disk partition/format information. This information is used during the 1-Touch Recovery for silent deployment of operating system and restoration of the client.

For more terms, refer to Glossary.

Supported Agents

The following agents support the 1-Touch recovery solution:

AIX File System

For more information, see Deployment - 1-Touch for AIX.
Linux File System

For more information, see Deployment - 1-Touch for Linux.