Databarracks launches first Recovery Battle Royale
Last month we launched our first Recovery Battle Royale. The challenge saw two teams of Databarracks technicians pitted against each other in a race against time. The task was to successfully perform a complex Asigra restore, including creating all relevant documentation, for a fictitious client, as quickly as they could. The team to finish in the shortest amount of time would be crowned Recovery Battle Royale champions 2015.
The Teams
The teams consisted of 3 technicians in each, of varying levels of experience. In Team Manton we have Anthony, Freddie and team captain John, with Sorin and Forid captained by Shanil in Team Hirani.
The Task
A fictitious client, Testlab2k10 Limited, experienced a major disaster and needed much of its server estate and data restored.
Teams were granted access to Asigra documentation, support forums and other internet resources freely, but asking for assistance from other Databarracks staff outside of their team resulted in a time penalty.
The team that got Testlab2k10 Limited up and running in the shortest time and produced the required documentation would be named champions by our panel of judges.
The challenge was split into 3 stages:
Stage 1: Stage 1 involved rebuilding a Windows 2008 r2 Domain Controller from scratch, ensuring that it had complete functionality, including all the records for network configuration, DHCP server and the Exchange datastore.
Stage 2: The goal of the second stage was to ensure that a specific email requested by the client was restored into the correct location. That email contained an activation code which granted access into stage 3...
Stage 3: The final stage was to rebuild the client's Windows 2008 SQL Express database. To verify that the database was restored successfully each team had to run SQL queries and recover the last piece of code.
During all 3 stages, full and accurate documentation had to be completed and submitted to the judging panel. This included separate documents for:
- Manually applying DS-Client and DS-MLR hotfixes
- Bare Metal restore
- Exchange Data Store restore
- SQL restore
- How to change a service account that is running DS-Client
- How to search within a backup set for specific item using DS-User functionality
- How to connect to the SQL instance using both SQL Management Studio and command line tools
The Winners
Both teams performed exceptionally well in the challenge, showing an excellent ability to work together in a high-pressure environment to solve a very complex problem.
Team Manton prepared first-class documentation, with great attention to detail. In fact, it was of such high quality that we'll be using it to build Standard Operating Procedures for our customers' Asigra backups.
But the winners had to be Team Hirani, who successfully rebuilt the entire environment and managed to unlock all three stages of the challenge with time to spare.
Congratulations to our winners and a huge well done to everyone who took part. We look forward to seeing who dares to challenge the crown next time round.
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