Nickc_uk,  The 3gb Recovery Partition actually is a WinRE enviroment. Dell installs and configures WinRE on the local hard drive of every server that is purchased with a factory-installed Windows Server 2008 operating system (OS). If you create backups of your server after it is fully configured, WinRE can restore those over the network or from local media. Those familiar with WinRE on Windows Vista will know that it can be configured to automatically fail over and boot from WinRE if the main OS boot fails. Hope this answers your question
Is there any sort of Dell backup software which has shipped with our T-420?  Just asking because looking through the OEM created partitions there are: What is the purpose of the 3Gb Recovery partition? Just checking that there is nothing built-in before otherwise installing Windows Server Backup on the hyper-V host partition. Thanks, 
Dell backup software?