Starting with Site Manager 8.1, the boot media agent is included with all Site Manager rescue media. The boot media agent is a component that runs in the rescue media and enables communication between the rescue environment (Windows PE) and the Site Manager server.
Once the rescue media has been booted, the boot media agent will be displayed:
Once the rescue media has booted, the message 'Startup complete. It is now safe to remove the boot media.' will be displayed. This indicates that the rescue media has booted successfully and the storage device that contains the rescue media can be removed.
At the top of the boot media agent, information about the connection to the Site Manager is displayed:
| Item | Description |
|---|---|
| Connection | This shows the connection status of the boot media agent to the Site Manager server. If the connection status is shown as 'Connected' then the boot media agent is communicating with the Site Manager server. If the connection status is shown as 'Disconnected' the 'Connect' button on the right of the boot media agent can be used to connect to a Site Manager server. |
| Server | This shows the DNS name of the Site Manager server that the boot media agent is connected to. |
| Login | In order to have repository shares automatically mapped, to make restoring an image easier, the user that is accessing the boot media agent must authenticate against the Site Manager server. The user that authenticates must have the relevant permissions to restore images. If the user that is accessing the boot media agent has not authenticated, this will be shown as 'Unauthenticated'; options in the boot media agent that require authentication will be disabled. This article contains more information about Site Manager user management. |
| Agent | This will display the NetBIOS name of the computer that has been booted using the rescue media. If the computer has not previously had a Site Manager agent installed, then 'Recovery:X' will be displayed instead; the X will be an incrementing number that will increase each time a computer is booted using the rescue media. |
On the right of the boot media agent, there are several buttons that can be clicked:
| Button | Description |
|---|---|
| Disconnect/Connect | If the boot media agent is connected to the Site Manager server, this button will show 'Disconnect' and can be used to disconnect from the Site Manager server. If the boot media agent is not connected to a Site Manager server, this button will show 'Connect'. Selecting this button will present a connection window, where a Site Manager server's connection details can be specified. |
| Log In | This button can be used to authenticate against the Site Manager server. The authentication details will be the same username and password that are used to access the Site Manager central management console. Users that can authenticate, and the level of access that they have can be controlled in the Site Manager settings, see this article for more information. |
| Computer Details | This button will open a window with additional information about the computer that has been booted with the rescue media. This includes information about the computer's hardware and Site Manager agent information. |
| Reboot | This will reboot the computer. |
At the bottom of the boot media agent are buttons that can be clicked to perform restore and deployment operations, and a brief description of what the button does.
Restore Agent
When this option is selected, the 'Agent Restore' wizard will open. If the computer is managed for backups by Macrium Site Manager, the agent will be detected automatically. Alternatively, a different Site Manager agent can be selected.
Selecting 'Restore' will then launch Macrium Reflect with the repository share automatically mapped and the backups for the selected agent will be displayed in the 'Existing Backups' tab.
Launch Reflect
This button will launch the rescue media version of Macrium Reflect. If the user that has authenticated in the boot media agent has the relevant permissions, a repository can be optionally mapped in Macrium Reflect to make accessing images located in a repository easier.
The repository can be selected from the list of existing Site Manager repositories and then mapped to a selected drive letter.
The mapped repository share is then accessible in the explorer:
This article contains more information about restoring an image using the rescue media version of Macrium Reflect.
For more information about performing a guided restore using the boot media agent, see this article (link to new article).
Deploy
Selecting 'Deploy' will start an endpoint-initiated golden image deployment.
For more information about endpoint-initiated deployments, see this article.
Take Golden Image
Selecting this button will open the 'Take Golden Image' wizard.
This article contains more information about creating a golden image.