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TipRoc's avatar
TipRoc
Level 2
12 years ago

Understanding the Catalog

I'm having some difficulty understanding the Catalog. My minimum requirements are to be able to restore from B2D for 1 month and be able to see at least 3 months in the catalog (for Tape) in order to meet our SLAs.

I have my Catalog set to truncate after 3 months. If I try to restore, I can see back to 07/13/2012. If I look in my \Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Catalogs folder I can see catalogs dating back to 02/22/2012.

Why can't I restore from 02/22/2012? Why the discrepancies? What is the Catalog actually looking at?

(I am more interested in understanding than trying to accomplish a particular task.)

Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec.cloud
Restore
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    12 years ago

    Hi,

     

    That setting is made going-forward...it doesn't do it restrospectively on any old catalogs. If these are confirmed as no longer needed, you could delete them!

    If you can't restore from that date, the tape might be overwritten or the incorrect date selected in the restore range.

    Thanks!

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    12 years ago

    When you truncate the catalogs, only a stub remains to tell you that you still have that backup set on your media.  However this stub does not have all the information for a restore.  To restore from such a media, you need to run a catalog job against the media.

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  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    Hi,

     

    That setting is made going-forward...it doesn't do it restrospectively on any old catalogs. If these are confirmed as no longer needed, you could delete them!

    If you can't restore from that date, the tape might be overwritten or the incorrect date selected in the restore range.

    Thanks!

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    When you truncate the catalogs, only a stub remains to tell you that you still have that backup set on your media.  However this stub does not have all the information for a restore.  To restore from such a media, you need to run a catalog job against the media.

  • TipRoc's avatar
    TipRoc
    Level 2
    12 years ago

    Is there a way to re-index the catalog, were it automatically figures out what's valid and what's not?

  • CraigV's avatar
    CraigV
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    No there isn't. You can try catrebuildindex -r but I don't think this will work...

    http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH142684

    Thanks!

  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    12 years ago

    If you have sufficient space, then don't truncate your catalog and you would not have to figure out which backup set you need to catalog before you can do a restore.