Disaster recovery framework
Unwind
© Lead Image © lucato, 123RF.com
A simple Bash shell script can be a very powerful tool: Relax-and-Recover generates rescue media from running systems, takes care of backups, and helps when migrating computers to new hardware or converting to virtual machines.
If you are you looking to migrate the system and data on your sad, old laptop to a new device or you have a server that's been standing in the corner for years consuming electricity that would be better off as a virtual machine, the simple Relax-and-Recover [1] shell script can help. This disaster recovery framework for Linux licensed under GPLv2 creates rescue disks (USB sticks, CDs, PXE boot images) and saves the data – optionally in cooperation with an external backup solution.
During subsequent recovery of the data, the tool proves to be a flexible partner that also takes hardware changes into account. Relax-and-Recover is thus not just an emergency tool, it is also a useful migration tool. Physical computers thus become virtual machines through Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) migration; the way back to physical hardware with Virtual-to-Physical (V2P) migration is also possible, and you can even migrate from one virtualization solution to another through Virtual-to-Virtual (V2V).
Our test team worked on Debian 8 ("jessie") and Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) with Relax-and-Recover current stable version 1.17.2 and the latest version 1.18 from the GitHub repository (March 2016) [2]. We produced a rescue medium and a backup of a desktop computer. We also backed up a legacy server, combining the script with an external backup solution to do so. After this, the rescue systems and backups formed the basis for converting the physical hardware to virtual machines.
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