Anyone any experience with creating a ghost backup of SCADA?

Hi all,

We have 2 SCADA PCs on site. One of them blew a PSU today and, although this was quickly replaced, it highlighted the fact that if it had been the hard drive that went we would have been in trouble.

I thought about buying a couple of PCs, and then making a 'ghost image' of each of the existing PCs and transferring it on to the new PCs. Then keep them as backups in case the original PCs go into fault.

Has anyone done this before? The PCs are running WinCC SCADA and I wondered whether a ghost image would get everything off the PC (i.e. licenses, port settings etc) in order to make the copy PC work correctly. Also, what ghost software would work best. These PCs are quite old and I don't want to install some large image making software only to have it conflict with the SCADA that is running on the PC at the moment (they are both on Windows XP as well).

Many thanks for any info on experiences / advice you have with this.

I use Acronis TrueImage.

I boot to a Recovery CD, and run the backup process to create an image file on a removable hard drive. This requires a few hours of downtime, but also doesn't require that I install anything on the target system.

When I've done this with PCs that run Rockwell Software activations (both FactoryTalk and EVRSI), they have been retained with no problems. I can't speak about Siemens activations.

I've also done Physical-to-Virtual Migrations using VMWare's Converter Standalone utility, with varying degrees of success. In those cases, Windows needed to be re-activated by the HMI and PLC software did not. The issue of getting the hard drive controller drivers correct is a big deal and you'll want to look into it before you start.

While there are other competitive solutions like Norton Ghost, as well as free ones, for my money Acronis TrueImage is my standard solution. All of the PC-based HMIs I ship get a backup sent with them as well as retained on our servers.

Thanks for the info Ken. Do you mean that Acronis TrueImage creates a Recovery CD for you to boot the target PC into?

If not, could you maybe give me some more details on the procedure with Acronis?

Thanks for your help

we're running HMIs in vmware or virtualbox. tie the activations to the virtual ethernet module MAC address. It is easy to take snapshots of the virtual machine disk so you can easily go back in time or start the VM on a new machine if the old one dies.

We tried Xen but couldn't figure out how to get the HMI to display on the console at boot.

Hi Von, thanks for the info. I only need to back up the 2 PCs though. There isn't any HMIs on the system. It's all done through the PC. It would have been a good way to do it (via a VM) at the start but I would rather stick with the system in its present configuration if possible and just find a way of backing it up 'as is'.

Thank you for your ideas though

I have recently used Paragon Drive Backup software ($40) to image a drive. It worked flawlessly duping a win-7 system (including the boot partition) from within win-7 while running. Yes, you need to install it onto the system for that type of backup but it imaged the drive (not using bit by bit) in 10 minutes. Image (backup) to removable media is also an option.

Just my $0.02

We keep a spare Hard drive in each of our servers that is physically disconnected just for this reason.
We go through after any major update and re-clone the drives to keep them current.
We use Clonezilla on a boot disk to do the clone. With high power processors and SSD's we can clone a server in about 10 minutes.

I also recently cloned my programming computer when upgrading my SSD, and did not have to reactivate my Rockwell software.

Dan, I've used Paragon partitioning software before and found it to be very good. Will check out the drive backup software.

Jawolthuis, the area that these computers are in is very dirty and quite hostile but the idea is a good one. I've not heard of Clonezilla. Will have a look at it.

Thanks

I have used Symantec/Norton Ghost 2003 for over ten year now. Like Acronis, nothing needs to be installed on the system. You can boot from a CD/DVD or USB drive to perform the backup or restore. Pretty much the same operation as what Ken mentions for Acronis. Everything will get backed up including licenses.

The bigger issue you may face regardless of what imaging software you choose is, when you restore this to a different PC it may trigger reactivation issues due to differences in hardware. Windows, Office, maybe even the application software although that is less likely. Not a big deal, but it might require a call to Microsoft to reactivate. Keep in mind Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows XP.

You will also have to consider, is that new PC compatible with Windows XP? Many new PCs have hardware where drivers for XP are not available. Simply moving the "image" from PC "A" to PC "B" may trigger Windows to install drivers as it detects different hardware. It could even cause the dreaded "Blue-Screen-of-Death".

It is not always possible to just move from one PC to another without a lot more work (read up on the Microsoft Sysprep utility). I like the idea of just having a spare hard drive ready to go that I could plug back into the same PC.

OG

Some great points there OG, thank you. There isn't any other software (office etc) on these PCs but certainly drivers may be an issue. Will do some research on the Sysprep util.

Thanks

I've used Acronis as well for my personal and work PC's, not so much anymore since it's all locked down with BitLocker.

I would recommend you run virtualized instances as others have mentioned. Eliminates the need for an "identical" computer setup, so if you have a failure any PC will do (assuming you don't have any legacy needs like serial connections). Much easier to take backups and clone it if you need to.

Paul (good to see me being quoted as your sig ) These machines do need serial support. They are talking to some old S5 PLCs via Serial-TTY converters.

I have used Ghost, Acronis, CloneZilla, Paragon and few Others. Storage Craft Shadow Protect is the best in the business not often but have had failed images with everything else and I do a lot of imaging into the 2-3K range.

It is very easy to take an image and restore it to dissimilar hardware and / or roll that image into a VM for any of the major players like VM Ware, Hyper V or Virtual Box. Using the boot disk no software needs to be installed.

IMHO I would convert them to a VM using the VM Ware converter and then install player on your new PC's this will separate the system as is from being hardware dependent and this would be a free solution using an older version of player or Virtual box.

Thanks Kid, appreciate your experience in this. Can't convert to VM though due to needing serial support. However, will have a look at Storage Craft Shadow Protect.

Is it a good backup?

As a reminder (hope I'm not preaching to the choir) with whichever method that you use:

1) After making a backup, verify it works by reloading it to a PC so you don't have a false sense of security. (Hint: Do it early during your shift in case it doesn't work so you have time to recover without management breathing down your back.)

2) After verifying per 1) above, make a second copy and store in a different location. I now just store onto the company servers that are backed up daily when changes occur. If you are not in control of your server, determine how long the backups are kept, some larger organizations keep backups for a very short time on some files (I must restore every 90 days to be safe.)