You need to know that you have good
backups. You should verify media that is written to if practical. Otherwise
periodically and randomly read verify data. You need to know what portion
of the filesystem is data, which is application, and which is operating
system. You need to know the filesystem layout. You need to have license
keys that are required to build the base system before restoring data.
You need to possess the operating system disks. You need to know basic
network topology for the system you are restoring. You should have a run
book for your system with all critical documentation. Some systems allow
you to recover your root filesystem using specific commands. You should
consider using them for a quick recovery of a root filesystem.
There is a product available for NetBackup
users called Intelligent Disaster Recovery (IDR) that completely automates
this process. IDR is available for NT in 3.4, and Veritas intends
to have support for popular Unix platforms in 4.1 (3Q 2001).
This is referred to as a bare metal
recovery. This topic is covered in some detail in Backup & Recovery.