Choosing a recovery server

Before recovering a Windows server, you must choose a recovery server where the server will be restored.

The recovery server can be the machine where the server was backed up, or can be a different physical or virtual machine. If you restore a server to the machine where it was backed up, files will be restored to their state when the server was backed up.

When recovering a Windows server, the recovery server:

• Must have 64-bit hardware. The BMR Agent can only restore a system to 64-bit hardware.

• Can be a physical or virtual machine (VM). You can restore a backup of a physical computer to a physical or virtual machine, and can restore a backup of a virtual computer to a physical or virtual machine.

  When restoring a computer to a VM, ensure that the VM configuration is compatible with the computer that is being recovered.

• Can use UEFI or BIOS. You can restore a backup of a BIOS-based computer to a BIOS or UEFI machine. You can restore a backup of a UEFI-based computer to a UEFI machine, but cannot restore a backup of a UEFI-based computer to a BIOS machine. For more information, see Recovering UEFI-based systems and Recovering BIOS-based systems.

• Can have an operating system and files, or can be in a bare metal state. If you restore to a machine that has an operating system and data, the existing files will be overwritten.

• Can have similar hardware to the source server, or can have dissimilar hardware.

  If the recovery server hardware supports the operating system of the source server you are restoring, you should be able to restore even if, for example, the disks are different. You might not be able to restore if the recovery server hardware is incompatible with the source server operating system.

  Some non-Intel or non-AMD processors, such as Itanium, might not restore to Intel/AMD processors.