This is partly a question about Time Machine in general, as well as backing up OS X Server with Time Machine.
During the process of testing the restore of a server from a Time Machine backup (to different hardware of course) I encountered a couple of issues.
The production server is a Mac Pro with an external RAID running Mountain Lion server. Service data is stored on the startup volume, but home directories are on the RAID.
1. First test: On different hardware I built up a Yosemite server and restored the Open Directory from an archive created on the production server. All seems to have worked well, however I'm not able to log in to user accounts. I believe this to be because the home folders live on the external RAID, which was not present on the simulation server. For now I am working on the hypothesis that restoring the external RAID will solve this problem. This will be tested.
2. Second test: Simulating a full restore of the server. I followed the process on this page: Restoring OS X Server from a Time Machine backup - Apple Support. I haven't yet been able to complete the test because the FireWire 800 is too slow. About to change to USB 3.0 to complete the test. However upon my first attempts the test server kept going to sleep. sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1 seems to have corrected this. I am running from the Recovery Partition yet it would still go to sleep unless I issued the command.
3. Now my primary reason for creating this post: Along the way I had some difficulty with one of the encrypted Time Machine destinations - it would not unlock. I replaced that with what turned out to be a dud. However the original drive suddenly started to work. So I removed the new-failed disk and replaced it with the original. Which seems to have successfully picked up where it left off. Is that correct? I was expecting to have to erase and start over. It this correct?
