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How to perform full Bare medal restores for SBS2011 standard

What would be the best Practice to perform tests on small business 2011 Server bare medal recovery?

Would testing Bare medal recovery on a Virtual program like Virtualbox work?
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Also I would like to add that most of our clients are using 4k drives. the server backs up without any issues but would that affect the restore?
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Yes, it would work. The best practice would be sure restoring to the similar hardware like one where you took the backup from. And 4K drives should not be a problem as well.
But! If you really want a reliable backup approach then check for some third party backup solution because Microsoft inbuilt backup is known for letting down exactly then when you need it urgently.
Look on StorageCraft, On Veeam Endpoint protection, on Paragon Hard Disk Manager, Acronis Backup & Recovery etc etc. They have better records than Windows Server Backup.
Explain what you mean by "Also I would like to add that most of our clients are using 4k drives. the server backs up without any issues but would that affect the restore? "

Here's a great article on how to do a restore of SBS 2011 http://blog.ronnypot.nl/?p=615
We use Windows server Backup that is Built into the OS.
and One of our servers went down a few weeks ago.
the drives we backup are 4k drives. SBS2011 does not support 4k drives.
512 sector drives are hard to find these days and Microsoft never came out with an update or service pack to resolve that issue.

I was not able to bare metal restore from that drive.
I was thinking about Acronis for a backup solution. I use the home addition for my Home PC and backs up everything.
That's correct. Third party backup tools do not have the problems with 4K drives anymore. And Windows Server Backup does have this problem.
Check this cost-effective tool: https://www.paragon-software.com/small-business/hdm-business/index.html
Have you used this Paragon software for backup?
And Have you ever performed a full restore using IT.
Yes, I have used it and I am using it now. And I did restore from its backup my DC Server. Plus Exchange server. Both worked perfectly.
Some of our customers have more than one server. Is this software licensed for only one server?
or can it backup both servers with one license?
Sorry I see they have a license for 10 servers. Basic Tech License.
I'm going to test the Demo Version
Yes, 1 License for 1 machine. For centralized backup approach they have Protect & Restore: https://www.paragon-software.com/medium-large-business/protect-restore/index.html
WSB in 2008 R2 and earlier uses VHD to store the backups. VHD's underlying block size is 512n. Thus, 4K drives don't work as VHD can't interpret where it's at.

The backups would have failed out of the box with the 4K drive. The logs and SBS Console would have shown such.

We picked up a cachet of 512n WD Black drives when we first hit this "problem" after purchasing a batch of 2TB Seagate ES drives that were "Advanced Format" meaning 4Kn.

We subsequently switched all of our SBS 2011 Standard and SBS 2008 Standard clients over to ShadowProtect by StorageCraft as most of our deployments were virtualized anyway and we wanted to avoid plugging a "drive" into the guest every backup rotation. Backup via network is so much simpler.
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David Atkin
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>512 sector drives are hard to find these days and Microsoft never came out with an update or service pack to resolve that issue.
WD Reds are 512e and very easy to find these days.
Stay under 2TB and you should be fine.
Thats exactly what is was. the raid drivers.
Thanks for your help guys.