Bare Metal Recovery with NinjaOne 

Bare metal recovery (BMR) restores an entire system, including the OS, applications, and data, to its original state after a disaster. Unlike file-level backups, BMR ensures full recovery on new hardware or after a failure, it offers strong protection against hardware failure and data loss, minimizing downtime and supporting recovery after hardware replacement. BMR solutions are scalable and flexible, with encryption to protect sensitive data.

NinjaOne enhances BMR by enabling IT teams to manage multiple devices and configurations efficiently. It streamlines recovery after failures, ensuring quick, secure restores with data integrity and encryption, providing fast, reliable disaster recovery and peace of mind.

How to Configure Bare Metal Recovery in NinjaOne

The first step in performing an image restoration is to download the Image Restore Manager. It can be downloaded from two different locations.

Option 1

Navigate to Administration > Library > Downloads and click the link to download the Image Restore Manager.

Administration window

Option 2

Navigate to a device with NinjaOne Backup enabled, hover over the backup icon, and select Download Image Restore Manager.

Select Download Image Restore Manager

Image Authorization Key

You will also need an Image Authorization Key for the device whose data you would like to restore. To generate an Image Authorization Key, follow the steps for Option 2 above, but select ‘Generate Image Authorization Key’ instead of downloading the Image Restore Manager. You will be prompted to set an expiration period when generating the Image Authorization Key. The default expiration period is 14 days.

Image Restore Key Generation

Once an Image Authorization Key has been generated for a device, it can also be manually invalidated by hovering the backup icon

for the device > Invalidate Image Authorization Key. Please note that doing so will invalidate all generated image authorization keys for the device.

Invalidate Image Authorization Key

Important Notes:

  • An image authorization key can only be used one time. Once an authorization key has been used to grab the backup data, it cannot be used again.
  • Multiple image authorization keys may be generated for a device.
  • When an Image Restore Key is created or invalidated it will display in the System Activities pane

Once you have downloaded the Image Restore Manager tool, you will see the restore options, including ‘Create Bootable Media for Image Restores,’ as well as several restore functions under the Utilities section.

Image Restore Manager tool

Create Bootable Media for Image Restores

Important Note: If using a virtual machine (VM), make sure to give at least 2CPU to the VM. The more resources you can allocate to the VM, the more the CPU and RAM will speed up the restore process.

This option allows you to create bootable media that contains the Image Restore tool, which in turn allows you to boot a machine and perform a bare metal restore.

Browse to select the destination for your ISO image or select a USB flash drive from the dropdown menu. All available removable drives will automatically populate in this dropdown.

Additional drivers to install with the bootable media may also be selected here, when applicable. You must have the Windows ADK installed in order to inject drivers.

Choose the Windows version used to create the NinjaRE ISO. This is not the OS you’re restoring. Select Windows 10 (NinjaRE-10) or Windows 11 (NinjaRE-11) accordingly. Finally, select whether or not to continue with the bootable media creation process if errors are encountered, and click Create.

Create Bootable Media for Image Restores

When creating a bootable USB or ISO, NinjaOne hosts a customized version of WinPE, which is how Microsoft refers to preinstallation environment (PE) images created on Windows 10 or newer. The compatibility of the image is the same as PE and the creation steps are similar, with the difference being the packages that can be enabled.

Important Note: There is a 32 GB maximum partition size limit for NinjaOne’s IRM to function correctly.

To boot the USB media, make sure the USB drive is selected as the boot drive in your BIOS. Then, follow the prompts on the screen to perform a bare metal restore.

Benefits of Using NinjaOne for Bare Metal Recovery

  • Complete System Recovery: Bare metal recovery allows you to restore an entire system, including the operating system, applications, settings, and data, to a new or wiped device, ensuring minimal downtime.
  • Fast and Efficient: NinjaOne’s BMR process is designed to be fast and efficient, helping reduce recovery time and get systems back online quickly, minimizing the impact on business operations.
  • Hardware Independence: NinjaOne’s bare metal recovery solution typically supports hardware-independent restores, meaning you can restore the image to different hardware configurations without issues.

FAQ

Bare metal refers to a physical computer or server without any operating system or software installed. It is the raw hardware on which an operating system or other software can be directly installed or restored.

A bare metal server is a physical server that is not shared with other users and does not have any pre-installed operating systems or virtualization layers. It provides direct access to the hardware, offering high performance, full control, and the ability to install custom software or configurations.

The key difference lies in what’s being restored:

Bare Metal Recovery: This restores the entire system to a working state, including the operating system, applications, settings, and all data. It’s typically used when a system is completely unbootable or when migrating to new hardware. Think of it as a complete rebuild from a backup image.

File Recovery: This restores specific files or folders from a backup. It’s used to recover lost or corrupted data without having to restore the entire system.

File recovery restores individual files. Bare metal recovery restores the whole system from a backup image, often including a system state component. System state backup itself isn’t a recovery method on its own, but rather a set of crucial OS data included in broader backup and recovery strategies.

For a bare metal restore, the following are typically required:

  1. Backup Image: A complete system image backup that includes the operating system, applications, settings, and data. This image is used to restore the system to its original state.
  2. Bootable Recovery Media: A bootable device (e.g., USB drive, DVD) containing the recovery software to initiate the restore process, especially if the system’s primary drive is not functional.
  3. Target Hardware: A new or wiped physical machine (or virtual machine) that the system will be restored to. The hardware may differ from the original system, but bare metal recovery often supports hardware-independent restoration.
  4. Recovery Software/Tools: Specialized software, like the NinjaOne Image Restore Manager, that can manage the restore process and apply the backup image to the target machine.
  5. Network Connectivity (optional): If the backup image is stored remotely (e.g., on a network share or cloud), network access is required to retrieve the backup.

With these elements in place, you can perform a full system recovery, restoring the operating system, applications, settings, and data to a functional state on new or repaired hardware.

It is called “bare metal” because it refers to a computer’s physical hardware without any operating system, software, or virtualization layer installed—just the raw, “bare” hardware.

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