Forum Discussion

Pigeonfarmer's avatar
Pigeonfarmer
Level 3
7 years ago

Backup Exec 2014 VRAY - Granular Restore Problem via Disk Based Backup

Hi there, 

I've read lots of posts on this forum and cannot find a solution to the exact problem I'm having, so I'm hoping someone here can help. I'm not a Backup Expert (clearly :smileyhappy:) and I've just run out of ideas. 

I'm using Backup Exec 2014 VRAY with all updates, service packs, hotfixes installed on a Windows Server 2012 R2 Virtual Machine (VMWare 5.5). We run 2 backups on our site - a Tape Based backup where the tape gets taken off site (requirement of management), and a disk based backup. 

I regularly have to restore individual files from one of our file servers (virtual machine) from the disk based backup. I would like to be able to restore the individual files from the disk based backup, rather than having to stage the entire virtual machine somewhere first. As I have understood from what I have read, you should be able to restore at granular level with disk based backups, but not from a tape based backup for obvious reasons. 

I have the following options enabled on the backup that are related to GRT. 


I have tried two ways of restoring : 

1. Right click on the server in the server view > Restore > Files, Folders or Volumes > File and Folder backups from a backup set > Enter the date range and find the file I want to restore > 

This wants to stage the VM before restore 

2. Click on the VMware Cluster > Right-click on the server in question > Restore GRT-Enabled data for the selected virtual machine > Files, Folders or Volumes > File and folder backups from a backup set > Enter the date range and find the file I want to restore 

Whichever way I try, seems to want to stage the VM first, which takes a huge amount of time.

Apologies if I have not supplied enough information, I am happy to post anything else that is needed to help diagnose this issue. 

Thanks for taking the time to read

Best regards

James 

2014
GRT
Windows Server 2012 R2
  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    Moderator
    7 years ago

    What sort of device is the disk based backup using i.e. if it is a disk array emulating a library (as a VTL or similar) then it will stage the restores.

     

    Also a word of caution (about your environment, not your problem) - if Backup Exec is installed inside a VM then we do not support writting to physical tape via any kind of pass-though operation. While some customers might find that this type of configuration appears to work for them, we are aware of lots of issues with this type of configuration and as such if you are using such a setup then it is at your own risk and we can only offer resoable efforts  based on our definition of alternative configurations should you have issues.

     

     

     

     

     

    • Pigeonfarmer's avatar
      Pigeonfarmer
      Level 3
      7 years ago

      Hi Colin, 

      Thanks for your response. Also I appreciate your note on running Backup Exec in a VM, but we are actually running it on a physical server just used for running Backup Exec and connecting to our tape library. 

      The backup to disk side of things is using a Synology RS815+ and is connected to the Backup Server via iSCSI target. 

      So should I be able to recover individual files? It seems really long-winded to have to restore a stage the entire VM for one file. 

       

      • Colin_Weaver's avatar
        Colin_Weaver
        Moderator
        7 years ago

        OK so in the job logs for the disk backups, does it list the media as starting with B2D or IMG?