For example, I will make a backup copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 and describe the process by items:
1) Open the “Server Manager”.
2) Select “Features” – “Add Features”, check “Windows Server Backup” and “Command-line Tools”, click the “Install” button and wait for the installation to complete.
3) Open the “Start” menu and select “Windows Server Backup”.
For the test, I clicked “Backup Once”, in the window that appears, I select the “Custom” configuration type and ticked the C drive and all the oslat except for the other local disks if they are (for example, drive D) in the next window, you can select the storage type where the backup a copy, for example “Local disks” and specify drive D, or “Remote shared folder” and specify the path, I was just running Samba on one of the Linux servers, so I connected the network folder and chose this option.
See also my article – Installing and Configuring Samba on Linux
After the process is complete, the folder “WindowsImageBackup” with a backup will appear on the disk or network share.
To restore the system from this backup, you can similarly click the “Start” – “Windows Server Backup” menu and select this backup, or if the server does not start, then start the Windows startup disk, select “System Restore” and specify this backup.