Win7 Backup vs Mirror on Critical PC

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One month out of the year (December) I have a designated Win 7 PC that operates a show and its up time is critical. For 7 consecutive years we have been very blessed (lucky) with no downtime durring critical periods.

To prepare for another season of no downtime I have been contemplating and testing backup scenarios – mirroring scenarios – and flat just kicking things around. I attempted a conversion of the installation to a pair of mirrored (via chipset) drives, but the conversion failed as Acronis couldn’t see the mirror set natively. As I read in different forums and here in the Lounge about Win 7 Drive mirroring http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread//142803-Mirroring-a-disk-in-Windows-7/page2?
I came to the conclusion that mirrioring a Root Drive in Win7 isn’t a very good idea.
I have no problem having an Acronis image ready to go back into place and all the data for the show is automatically backed up to a Win 8 R2 storage server so a restore of a failed machine would only take 30 min. to an hour or so, but with hundreds of people waiting for a highly technical show to begin or continue – thats too long.

Always planning for the unexpected – anybody have any other ideas?

The caveat to my downtime fears was blatantly evident two years ago when during a live news feed I used my laptop wireless connected via RDC to trigger events in the show, I set the laptop down and the lid shut – breaking the connection and the show went black – on Live NBC TV – It’s a matter of record. All I could do was laugh….

I am a tech by profession – so not my first Rodeo, I just need to kick more ideas around – and this is a good place for that.

Papa

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The easiest method of providing robust computing is to virtualize the machine. Then you can have multiple copies of the machine that can be run on a server within a couple of minutes. All you need is a PC capable of rendering the virtual machine.

cheers, Paul

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The easiest method of providing robust computing is to virtualize the machine. Then you can have multiple copies of the machine that can be run on a server within a couple of minutes. All you need is a PC capable of rendering the virtual machine.

cheers, Paul

Thanks Paul,
I had attempted to use VMwares afordabe product 16 months ago – we couldn’t get the audio and video to stay in sync – we would loose up to a half second or more sync. VM community recomended looking for other options. I use the expensive version at my work 20. I wouldn’t be without it at work.
Appreciate the feedback.

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Another possibility for critical situations, Romulus and Remus. Don’t wait to mirror a computer in case of failure, have one ready to step in.

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If you have the availability of extra HD’s, Clones of the original allow a different HD to be placed in place of the original in the time it takes to switch over. If 2 or 3 HDs can be installed at the same time, the second and perhaps third drive could contain a clone of the first and could be booted in place of the first if something happened to number one.

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If you have the availability of extra HD’s, Clones of the original allow a different HD to be placed in place of the original in the time it takes to switch over. If 2 or 3 HDs can be installed at the same time, the second and perhaps third drive could contain a clone of the first and could be booted in place of the first if something happened to number one.

Provided nothing happens to the rest of the hardware and provided disaster doesn’t strike affecting all simultaneously. I don’t know what DJs use now, probably just an iPod and a dock, but for a while when computers were used, a failure at a wedding dance or some such was unthinkable so the smart ones who still wished to get paid carried an entire spare backup system.

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How about using a Raspberry Pi to stream the content? Cheap easy, low overhead, you can have two running and swap if required…

cheers, Paul

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