How to Back Up and Restore System Center Essentials

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Probably your most important contingency plan is your plan for disaster recovery. Regular data backups and a plan to restore systems can help you recover successfully when disaster occurs. To restore the Essentials 2007 environment from a disaster scenario, you create backups of the following data:

  • Data and log files of the Essentials 2007 Management Server databases and the Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) database.

  • The local folder, if any, in which you specified that update files from Microsoft Update should be stored. Update files are required for installing an update on a computer. If you chose to store update files on Microsoft Update, there is no local update file storage folder on the Essentials 2007 Management Server.

Backing up Essentials 2007

To locate the database instances containing Essentials 2007 data

  1. The SQL Server 2005 instance hosting the Essentials 2007 operational databases can be found from the following registry location on the Essentials 2007 Management Server:

    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Operations Manager\3.0\Setup\DatabaseName

  2. The SQL Server 2005 instance containing the WSUS database can be found from the following registry location on the Essentials 2007 Management Server:

    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup\SqlServerName

To locate the data and log files of a database

  1. Open SQL Server 2005 Management Studio and connect to the instance hosting the desired database.

  2. Click the Databases node, and select the database to be backed up.

  3. Right-click the database name and click Properties.

  4. In the Database Properties dialog box, click Files in the navigation pane on the left.

  5. The locations of the data files and log files are specified in the Path column of file properties.

    Note

    If the WSUS database is hosted under the Windows Embedded SQL Server instance, the registry key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup\SqlServerName points to the embedded SQL Server instance that is represented by %computername%\MICROSOFT##SSEE. In this case, database and log files are stored under %systemdrive%</EM>WSUS\MSSQL$WSUS folder, unless you specified a different folder during WSUS setup. If you specified a different folder when you originally installed WSUS, data and log files are stored under that folder.

To locate the update content files folder

  • If you are storing the update content file locally, all the updates are stored in a local folder. You can find the location of that folder from the following registry entry:

    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup\ContentDir

To restore Essentials 2007 data

  1. If you have a backup of update content files folder, copy files from that folder into a location that the Essentials 2007 Management Server can access.

  2. Install Essentials 2007 on a new server or on a re-imaged server of the same name (in the same domain where it was installed before) as the previous Management Server computer, and select a database instance with the same name as the previous Essentials 2007 database instance.

  3. Specify the same action account that was used before.

  4. Specify the location of the existing update content files folder during Essentials 2007 setup.

    Note

    If you copy update content files to D:\WSUS\WsusContent folder, specify the Update content location as D:\WSUS during Essentials 2007 setup.

  5. Complete Essentials 2007 setup.

  6. On the Essentials 2007 Management Server, stop the following services:

    • MOM Health Service

    • MOM Config Service

    • MOM SDK Service

    • Update Services

  7. Detach newly created databases from the selected SQL Server 2005 database instance by following these steps:

    1. Launch SQL Server Management Studio.

    2. Right-click the Essentials 2007 database name, and select Tasks > Detach to detach Essentials 2007 database.

    3. Repeat step b for the WSUS and the Essentials 2007 Data Warehouse databases.

    4. Right-click the Databases node and click Attach.

    5. Click Add, and select the .mdf and .ldf files of the previous Essentials database from your backup.

    6. Repeat steps d and e for the WSUS and Essentials 2007 Data Warehouse databases.

  8. Restart the following services:

    • MOM Health Service

    • MOM Config Service

    • MOM SDK Service

    • Update Services

  9. Start the Essentials 2007 console, and start the Feature Configuration Wizard.

  10. This step is necessary only if you selected the Local Policy option for configuring Essentials 2007 servers and managed computers in the Feature Configuration Wizard. Select the Repair option for all managed computers as follows:

    1. In the Essentials 2007 console, click the Administration button.

    2. In the Administration pane, expand Device Management.

    3. Click Agent Managed.

    4. Right-click the desired managed computers, and click Repair.

See Also

Concepts

Configuration of System Center Essentials

Other Resources

Getting Started with System Center Essentials
System Center Essentials Deployment Planning and Installation