Feature Request - boot in recovery console

[treisel]

so if you reboot your System befor Startup it will show a recovery console. the bits for the recovery console can be written to a hidden Partition. so if your System chrashes you can boot in to this console without a cd or usb recovery media. usefull?!

[Vitaliy S.]

Yes, that feature could be useful, indeed, but as far as I know there could be other laptop/vendor specific data stored in these partition. Dmitry would be a better target to discuss this feature, as he participated in internal discussions regarding this functionality.

[treisel]

Hi Vitaliy,
could you please pass this request to Dmitry? Thanks. Maybe this could be a Option by the Installation process like "would you set a recovery item by startup the system"..
Till now i'm very happy and so far every Thing works fine, also a lokal full restore from the System. the Image was on a second local hdd. perfect and quick! well done!

[Gostev]

Yes, we did discuss this feature internally, but I don't remember the outcome either. I'll ask Dmitry.

[Dima P.]

Thank you Thomas!

Honestly, we had it in the alpha version, but in different way: we wanted to replace the existing windows recovery partition with our own. That seemed like a good idea, but then we realized if something goes wrong – end user will have no ability to restore at all via Endpoint or Windows native tools. We postponed this feature and decided to polish it, so it’s definitely in the list.

[treisel]

Hi Dmitry, thanks for your response, yea could be a bit difficult for some users. I thought you do your own recovery item - like after the bios and befor Windows boot so it is beside the Windows recovery console. colud be "hit f12 to get the veeam recovery console". so veeam creates its own "hidden" Partition (2 or 3 GB) if you would like to "install" this console by installing the enpoint solution. This could be an optional item. just my 50 Cents. But so far, im very happy with your solution, a masterpice and for free - thank you all so much! best Thomas

[Vitaliy S.]

I thought you do your own recovery item

Seems like a way to go

[Dima P.]

The only problem I see – we would need to cut off a part of the disk for the recovery volume. How many of you have the existing disks with unallocated space left?

[Regnor]

Well, you could try to boot the PE(wim) or a VHD.
If you click 'boot to recovery console', VEB could manipulate the bootloader so that the next reboot shows the Recovery console as a boot option.

I would have to look closer at that, but I'm sure it would work somehow

[treisel]

Hi Vitaly, hi dmitry, hello Regnor!

well, i guess we all hav 2 or 3 GB of unallocated space ;o). i know you always will have users and they don't have... If you don't have this space, veeam cloud say "sorry but you don't have ..." so this Option is not possible. please create a rescue media...

[Dima P.]

Thomas,

I am sure we all have free disk space in the existing volumes on disks , but I have never seen a single user with unallocated disk space. So the idea to cut/shrink the existing users volume free space does not sound harmless, any shrink operation can potentially corrupt existing data.

[mausger]

Hi guys.

Why shrinking or creating recovery partitions?
Just do it like it is done in Symantec system Recovery.
They just copy the Recovery Environment to a folder called SRD (System Recovery Disk) and create a windows boot menu entry for the recovery environment using bcdedit.
So you simple get an additional start menu entry when booting the machine. One for the OS and one for the Recovery Environment.
This works fine an is not a problematic change of the system like changing partitions.
In Symantec System Recovery this feature ist called "LightsOut Restore" which can be installed after installation of the product from within the GUI.
This would be great to have, because in many cases you don´t have your Recovery Media with you.

Another great thing would be to make an external USB Drive bootable as Recovery Media WITHOUT formatting the drive because ther could be already some restore points or other data on this disk. So it is not fine to format it.
Symantec System Recovery does not format the USB drive, to make it bootable as a Recovery Media.
They also just put the Recovery Media files to a folder called SRD on the USB disk.

So maybe download an eval of SSR and take a look at that features.

It would be great to have this features also in Veeam Endpoint Backup.


So go for it, Veeam Team, we believe in you!!!

[Regnor]

That's what I meant, but much better explained

[Dima P.]

We are aware of this approach. Let’s imagine you have a system crash and your volume is corrupted, or you got a virus that is deleting your files - how you are going to run a recovery from those files on inside the volume ? Creating volume without mount point is much safer as at least it will safe you recovery data from user’s interaction.

[ml35]

Hi,
I like to ressurect threads from the dead.

I would like to ask the team to re-consider this feature. I am well aware that this is totally useless in a storage crash scenario, but it would be a time saver if the storage is still ok and the boot menu works, as you will not have to reach for the recovery physical media.

This should be a feature not advertised, because innocents will get bitten by it if they only do this without a physical recovery media. A third party app does it like this: it creates a random uid folder under \boot, and places there a winre.wim file. then it configures the boot manager to boot from there.

ps: I tried to create a similar boot maager entry with veeams' .wim file but it fails to boot

[Dima P.]

ml35,

Thanks for the feedback. I agree that this case makes total sense, so consider your vote being added to this feature request. Cheers!