Easy: Restoring from a RAID 1 device

Question

Hya folks!

Setup:
	BackupExec 2012 running on SBS 2011.
	Storage device is a 1GB drive plugged into a Stardom with a secondary disk that we manually swap and take offsite every week (actually, a collection of four such drives that we swap in series). This gives us backups going back four weeks.

We want to restore a mailbox from three weeks ago. I've pulled the oldest RAID 1 disk&nbsp;out of rotation, mounted it in a usb enclosure, and shared it over the network.

I am, however, not very familiar with how Backup Exec's manages storage devices and I am having trouble creating a Restore job from this network disk.

Can someone please walk me through the process to create a Restore job from a network share for an old backup set?

Part of the problem may be that the disk has the same identity as the active storage drive. I tried adding the network share in storage via the menu:

Storage | Configure Storage | Disk-Based Storage | Disk Storage | ...

Error message: "The disk storage device [PrimaryStorageDiskName]&nbsp;was found at the specified path. It is already a device on [ServerName] and cannot be added as a shared device."

I'm sure it's a relatively trivial process, and my inexperience is the only major barrier.

Much thanks!

vjware · Answer

Why not insert the oldest disk into the Stardom itself so that it is recognized by BE as the original storage ?

The other option may work. Copy the contents of the oldest disk into a network share except the changer.cfg, folder.cfg files. Try creating a Disk Storage from BE's interface now and point it to this network share. If this gets added successfully, run an inventory and catalog of the storage device and check if the restore selections are available or not.

Though, I would still recommend putting back the oldest disk into the original enclosure and running a restore from there.

colin_weaver · Answer

Hmm if you are doing what it appears you are and in effect flat file copying disk based backup sets, by extracting a mirrored disk to a vault which is kept offline whilst more backup operations take place, then you are going to have all sorts of problems with inventory and catalog information being mismatched (as well as possible drive letter issues if GRT is involved) If this is the case there may be no easy way to restore as lots of manual steps wil be needed to get things consistent.

&nbsp;

See this document to understand why

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&amp;id=TECH176061

&nbsp;

It might be easier if your catalogs and BEDB.BAK are also stored on the disk that you swap out as then you would at least have a potentially matched set of the 3 key components of Backup Exec.

&nbsp;

In your scenario I think I would install a clean version of Backup Exec somewhere and then attach that disk and run inventory and catalog jobs so that new references are created with no way to mismatch with historical data still on the backup server. However in the long term you might want to reconsider your backup solution (topology and process design)

&nbsp;

bcaafc_it · Answer

Good morning VJware,
	&nbsp;

First some more details of my efforts:

My first attempt was in fact to remove both the primary and secondary drives from the stardom, and then to put the old disk into the primary drive slot under the presumption that Backup Exec would automatically see the old backup sets. When I tried to do a restore job, however, it was still showing the same backup sets from the recent disk (that I hadd removed). I presumed (perhaps incorrectly) that this was a cache of the newer inventory so I tried to run an inventory job on the old disk, and the job failed with an error that unfortunately I did not record. My conclusion (again, possibly erroneously) was that there was some sort of configuration on the stardom or disks that prevented me from loading up the old data directly from that setup. My experience with RAID configurations is, as you can probably see, very limited.
	
	Since I had also done a restore job about two years ago with a third party IT team, and during that process we had removed the hard disk from it's stardom enclosure and accessed the information from a networked workstation (regrettably I do not recall exactly how) I purchased a usb enclosure and set up the hard disk as a new drive on my workstation, shared to the server running B.E., and when it failed to load up the storage device I posted here.
	
	Today I will try your recommendation about the changer.cfg and folder.cfg files. *fingers crossed*

bcaafc_it · Answer

Thanks for that super helpful link! I'm going to read through before I try the solution recommended in the earlier comment, if only to familiarize myself with the way the system works.
	
	In our case the entire&nbsp;backup process is stored to the same&nbsp;disk, including all inventory and catalog files, and that entire disk is mirrored on to a second disk that is pulled out on Monday morning (when no backups are running) and replaced with the next disk in queue.

bcaafc_it · Answer

Great news, and less great news.

@VJware - your tip about removing the config files was excellent, and post-removal I was able to mount the shared backup as a second storage device. I did an inventory and catalog and, sure enough, when I went into Exchange restore options for my server I found the old backup sets. Woohoo!

Sadly, the restore job failed.

"The job failed with the following error: Cannot log on to EWS with the specified credentials. Review the resource credentials for the job, and then run the job again."

I check to make sure my network share permissions were clean (confirmed - Everyone has full access).

Then I ran the Test Credentials function in the restore wizard and all my credential tests came back successful.

I tried running the same restore job a second time and got another failure:

"The job failed with the following error: A communications failure has occurred between the Backup Exec job engine and the Agent for Windows."

Honestly, I'm surprised to see a different error - I would have expected the same issue with EWS login credentials given that I was unable to find the EWS login credential configuration.

&nbsp;

Any additional tips would be greatly appreciated!

Forum Discussion

Easy: Restoring from a RAID 1 device

Related Content

all devices stuck at "discovering devices

BMR restore.

How to view managed devices within NetBackup WebUI and Administration Console

Device Paused

Report Restore