Bare Metal Recovery for Linux

Cove Data Protection (Cove)'s Bare Metal Recovery (BMR) for Linux is the process of restoring an entire Linux system, including the operating system, applications, and data onto a completely blank physical or virtual machine with no pre-installed operating system. This capability is essential for disaster recovery, hardware migration towards ensuring business continuity.

BMR for Linux is performed using Cove Rescue Media, which provides a dedicated recovery environment and the necessary tools to re-create the original disk layout and restore files and folders.

Please carefully check the Bare Metal Recovery requirements before moving on to the Bare Metal Recovery instructions.

Cove Rescue Media is delivered as a bootable ISO image based on Debian 12. It integrates two key components:

  • Backup Manager : Responsible for restoring files and folders.
  • Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) : Responsible for re-creating the disk configuration.

Cove Rescue Media orchestrates these components within a unified recovery workflow, ensuring that the system is restored reliably, consistently, and with minimal administrative effort.

The diagram below illustrates the overall Bare Metal Recovery process for Linux using Cove Rescue Media:

Cove rescue media downloads the run package, installs it and optionally restores the system state archive. The rescue media then extracts the system state archive and invokes Relax-and-recover which partitions and mounts the disks. Relax-and-recover then moves the partitioned disks and invokes backup manager to recover files and folders to the local disks. Once this is completed, Relax-and-recover then installs the bootloader to the local disks.