disaster recovery -- windows 2008 R2 datacenter on IBM x3650 after major hardware upgrades

disaster recovery -- windows 2008 R2 datacenter on IBM x3650

cpu upgrade - it exchange au sent a good match for the existing one.

do a server start ... good

memory upgrade --- 2 * 8 GB kits --- all good ... after the server

before the upgrade, I took a shadow protect image . in restrospect , this is not enough,

then I put in $79.50 JMicron pci-e esata card, boot the server, it is asking for driver, pop in the cd, it loaded a driver with easy ... but looked weirdo.

then shutdown the server, and loaded back to the rack.

when I just about to go home, I noticed the server booted to recovery mode.

oh dear another disaster recovery operation .............

so we un-did everything remove the second cpu, extra memory and the esata card ...

the server was still rebooting .........

phew ..... in the recovery mode the windows 2008 R2 is asking for system state backup.... ah s!ttsd ... I should have done that

god ... raid controller took so long each time initialzie ... that made me press F8 hard

eventually I got the "Last known configuration ..." screen

select it ,   ........ voila.... I can go home now.

the result is new 2nd hand cpu added, new 16GB RAM added without that e-sata card

bitter lession learned: backup your server before you do upgrades; do a full windows server backup if possible; or at least a system state backup

yeah, windows 2008 system state backup, it is so slow , my co-work wants to go home

8.89GB system state data for this server, it took more than 45 minutes to back it up to an external USB 2 drive. ... quite disappointing