Ruska
15 years agoLevel 4
Media Server Catalogs
We will be conducting a disaster recovery exercise in the near future. The first step of course will be to install a fresh copy of Backup Exec on a server to be used to restored all other production servers from tape backups.
To know what date is sitting on which tapes I need the catalogs on the newly built server. Our media server is being backed up along with all other servers on a daily base using the same policy. If I had completed building a new server with BE running on it. I would have to run a catalog on each tape until finding the tape with catalogs on it. This could end up being a very lengthy process at which time is a luxury not at hand. As getting the servers backup up and running this step of the DR plan has to go as quick as possible.
My question is thus, how do I ensure that when I recall a batch of tapes, I know which one to pop in first so that I can populate BE with its catalogs so that form there on I can restore servers starting by highest priority to low using the catalogs. Running fresh catalogs could take hours especially when it comes to file servers.
BE grabs tapes randomly as it needs it form the library. As tapes are written full they are replaced with random expired tapes and so the loop continues. These tapes are taken off site daily. If disaster strikes and I recall a batch of tapes, how can I ensure knowing which tape\tapes the catalogs are sitting on so that I can restore them first?
To know what date is sitting on which tapes I need the catalogs on the newly built server. Our media server is being backed up along with all other servers on a daily base using the same policy. If I had completed building a new server with BE running on it. I would have to run a catalog on each tape until finding the tape with catalogs on it. This could end up being a very lengthy process at which time is a luxury not at hand. As getting the servers backup up and running this step of the DR plan has to go as quick as possible.
My question is thus, how do I ensure that when I recall a batch of tapes, I know which one to pop in first so that I can populate BE with its catalogs so that form there on I can restore servers starting by highest priority to low using the catalogs. Running fresh catalogs could take hours especially when it comes to file servers.
BE grabs tapes randomly as it needs it form the library. As tapes are written full they are replaced with random expired tapes and so the loop continues. These tapes are taken off site daily. If disaster strikes and I recall a batch of tapes, how can I ensure knowing which tape\tapes the catalogs are sitting on so that I can restore them first?
- I think that everybody here is looking at the technical side of the solution, when it might be a bit easier than that.
When you do the disaster recovery of your media server, it'll contain all the catalogs of backups up to the point when the backup was taken.
So to ensure you know which tapes you need to use to recover a server, I'd do one of two things:
1. Ensure that the backup of the BE media server is the last backup to run out of your routine backup jobs (if you do jobs batched up, like overnight).
2. After your backup jobs have run, run a "Media required for recovery report". This can be printed or emailed off-site. When you come to recover a server, (including the BE media server) you can simply look at the report to see which tapes to use. You'll still need to inventory and catalog the tapes you'll use for the restore, but at least you can grab the right tapes, without having to catalog everything.