Forum Discussion

TEngelhardt's avatar
TEngelhardt
Level 3
9 years ago
Solved

Recovery of MS SQL DB`s without Network Conection

Hello BackupExec Specialists,

we have a problem and I hope somebody can help us in this case.

Enviroment first:

Version: BE 2014 SP1 on physical maschine.

Backup of Servers via BE Agent

Backup of MS SQL DB`s via Agent.

Problem:

On a desaster recovery test we wanted to recover 1 Server and the SQL DB`s too. But the recovered Server has no Netzwork connection. Is it possible to recover the SQL DB`S without using the BE Agent? Ive spent a lot of time reading the Admin guide, but I dont find any answer. Sure after recovering the Server a must recover the master D first and than the needed Databases. But how can I do this.

Thank you for answering.

2008) Not Applicable
2012
  • pscottbaker's avatar
    pscottbaker
    9 years ago

    Did you review the section of the Admin Guide for Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR)? That outlines the entire process and that's really the only way you would be able to recover a remote server without networking - you have to be physically at that remote server and that server must have access to the backup data. This means that you would want to have your backups on a disk that is locally accessible to the server. So, they would need to be on a USB / eSATA drive or a separate internal disk that was not present at the time of backup - the point being that it needs to be accessible without networking and a drive that SDR will not overwrite during recovery. In a nutshell you would boot up the server with the SDR disk and have the SDR wizard recover all of the data from a locally attached hard drive and ideally you will have the .DR file that gets generated during a full backup of the server, but that's all outlined in the Simplified Disaster Recovery section of the admin guide.

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    9 years ago

    SDR itself is a bare metal product against the OS it is not a single pass restore of all database content along with the OS.  Application databases need a secondary restore job after you have recovered the OS, which would mean the customer would need an accessible Backup Exec Server to drive the job - and if the SQL server itself is not a Backup Exec Server this would need networking.

     

     

  • Miguel_Angel-Lo's avatar
    Miguel_Angel-Lo
    9 years ago

    If I understand your question correctly, you have recovered the OS via SDR but the recovered OS has no network connectivity? Now you want to restore the DB onto the recovered OS, correct? 

    Two things come to mind, first: can’t you setup a "local network" by connecting the backup server and recovered OS to a switch and assigning them an IP in the same subnet? then recover that way?

    Another thing you could do is restore the databases to the backup server itself. once the databases are restored, detach them and copy the files to a DVD or USB drive and transfer them to the recovered OS and attach them that way. The database files should be in your Microsoft SQL Server folder under the instance name of your database. 

    I hope this helps. 

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  • m_defender007's avatar
    m_defender007
    Level 3
    9 years ago

    Restarting SQL server will disconnect users. Easiest way I've found - good also if you want to take the server offline.

    But for some very wierd reason the 'Take Offline' option doesn't do this reliably and can hang or confuse the management console. Restarting then taking offline works.

    Sometimes this is an option - if for instance you've stopped a webserver that is the source of the connections.

    • VJware's avatar
      VJware
      Level 6
      9 years ago

      For System DBs such as master, model -

      BE automatically creates copies of the system DBs when the backups of these DBs are made. They are named as master$4idr, model$4idr  etc. This way, the master DB & other system DBs can be restored without using the BE Agent.

      For user DBs -

      Restoring without the BE Agent may be possible if this option was checked in the SQL backup job settings "Create on-disk copies of SQL backups...", else alternative would be to install BE on the SQL server itself and then run a local restore.

       

  • pscottbaker's avatar
    pscottbaker
    Level 2
    9 years ago

    Did you review the section of the Admin Guide for Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR)? That outlines the entire process and that's really the only way you would be able to recover a remote server without networking - you have to be physically at that remote server and that server must have access to the backup data. This means that you would want to have your backups on a disk that is locally accessible to the server. So, they would need to be on a USB / eSATA drive or a separate internal disk that was not present at the time of backup - the point being that it needs to be accessible without networking and a drive that SDR will not overwrite during recovery. In a nutshell you would boot up the server with the SDR disk and have the SDR wizard recover all of the data from a locally attached hard drive and ideally you will have the .DR file that gets generated during a full backup of the server, but that's all outlined in the Simplified Disaster Recovery section of the admin guide.

    • Colin_Weaver's avatar
      Colin_Weaver
      Moderator
      9 years ago

      SDR itself is a bare metal product against the OS it is not a single pass restore of all database content along with the OS.  Application databases need a secondary restore job after you have recovered the OS, which would mean the customer would need an accessible Backup Exec Server to drive the job - and if the SQL server itself is not a Backup Exec Server this would need networking.

       

       

  • Miguel_Angel-Lo's avatar
    Miguel_Angel-Lo
    Level 3
    9 years ago

    If I understand your question correctly, you have recovered the OS via SDR but the recovered OS has no network connectivity? Now you want to restore the DB onto the recovered OS, correct? 

    Two things come to mind, first: can’t you setup a "local network" by connecting the backup server and recovered OS to a switch and assigning them an IP in the same subnet? then recover that way?

    Another thing you could do is restore the databases to the backup server itself. once the databases are restored, detach them and copy the files to a DVD or USB drive and transfer them to the recovered OS and attach them that way. The database files should be in your Microsoft SQL Server folder under the instance name of your database. 

    I hope this helps.