Forum Discussion

Gordon_Fecyk's avatar
Gordon_Fecyk
Level 3
8 years ago

SDR of a server more than 30 days old

I have a server that I decommissioned more than two years ago that someone wants me to restore. I have the backup sets here and they are SDR-enabled backup sets, but they don't show up in the drop-do...
2014
32-bit
sdr
Windows Server (2003
  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    8 years ago

    The restore selectison (for any backup set not specific to SDR ) defaults to filtering on 30 days - you need to adjust the settiing near the top of the restore selection pane to show further back.

    With regards the SDR issue:

    There is no 30 day specific limit, although there is a "3 complete SDR sets limit" the rolls along deleting the older SDR records as you create the next, however you would have to still be backing up the server concerned to experience this (unless you are trying to go back more than 3 sets before you decommissioned the server). Note: it is possible to increase this limit but you ave to do it prior to running the backups not afterwards - see http://www.veritas.com/docs/000022927

    Which version of BE did you backup with?

    Can you see normal restore selections for this server (after changing the date filter mentioned above and covering the dates you are intersted in)?

    Do your catalogs get truncated?

Colin_Weaver's avatar
Colin_Weaver
Moderator

The restore selectison (for any backup set not specific to SDR ) defaults to filtering on 30 days - you need to adjust the settiing near the top of the restore selection pane to show further back.

With regards the SDR issue:

There is no 30 day specific limit, although there is a "3 complete SDR sets limit" the rolls along deleting the older SDR records as you create the next, however you would have to still be backing up the server concerned to experience this (unless you are trying to go back more than 3 sets before you decommissioned the server). Note: it is possible to increase this limit but you ave to do it prior to running the backups not afterwards - see http://www.veritas.com/docs/000022927

Which version of BE did you backup with?

Can you see normal restore selections for this server (after changing the date filter mentioned above and covering the dates you are intersted in)?

Do your catalogs get truncated?

Gordon_Fecyk's avatar
Gordon_Fecyk
Level 3
8 years ago

The server in question was last SDR-backed up in February 2014. Hm... this is probably from having backed up using BE 2010 R3 and then doing an in-place upgrade. Strange that the .DR file for this server still exists. When making a new SDR disk, this server was available to add to the list.

Since upgrading to BE 2014 though, I had done some VM-based backups of the same server. I successfully restored that server from a VM-based backup so the folks who needed it can access it; no SDR disk needed.

I only stopped using VM-based backups because those VMs were thin-provisioned and I was getting very poor deduplication ratios from them. More current VMs that are SDR-protected are available to restore from.

The original SDR (or IDR if coming from 2010 R3) backups are here and are selectable when I dial the start date back to before 2014. If nothing else, I can restore individual bits from that.

--

  • Colin_Weaver's avatar
    Colin_Weaver
    Moderator
    8 years ago

    Just to comment on this -

    A .DR file from Backup Exec 2010 R3 is an IDR componant not an SDR component, which I suspect explains why the SDR disk did not correctly handle it.

    Also a .DR fiel form 2010R3 probably would not get removed by BE 2014 so it would hang around.

     

    And yes Vmware backup have a huge advantage over SDR when it comes to restoring a VM so even with some differences in duplication ratio I would recommend you use virtual machine backups if you have VMware or Hyper-V VMs just because the restore process is much simpler and potentially quicker as well.