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user022013's avatar
user022013
Level 4
11 years ago
Solved

Exchange restores are much larger than expected

Hi gurus,

I have an issue restore Exchange Information Store and transaction logs.

Master/Media and client running 7.5.0.7 on Windows 2008 R2

Exchange is 2010 running on Windows2008 R2

I select the Full Exchange backup for the Information Store -  size is 361539480 kb (as reported in NetBackup BAR window)

I select multiple transaction log backups - total size is  3GB

I have a 600GB drive to restore the files to - dedicated to exchange restores and empty.

Restore continues to fail - Restore size reported in Activity Monitor is over 1TB.

Does anybody know why this is occurring?

Thank you.

7.5
Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server
Backup and Recovery
NetBackup
Windows Server (2003-2008)
  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    11 years ago

    If you restore from multiplxed backups, the size counter is the GUI, is the data read from tape - including those fragment not needed for the restore because they belong to other streams. This is the cost of using multiplxed backups - it increases restore time.

    You should able to trust the  image size reported by Netbackup.

7 Replies

  • Marianne's avatar
    Marianne
    Level 6
    11 years ago

    Want to borrow my 2TB USB drive?  wink

    In all seriousness - you will need logs to see what happened during the restore.
    On media server - bptm and bpbrm
    On Exchange server - tar

    Windows Event log may also give you a clue as to what happened.

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    If you restore from multiplxed backups, the size counter is the GUI, is the data read from tape - including those fragment not needed for the restore because they belong to other streams. This is the cost of using multiplxed backups - it increases restore time.

    You should able to trust the  image size reported by Netbackup.

  • user022013's avatar
    user022013
    Level 4
    11 years ago

    Marianne,  thank you.  We are in the process of sourcing multiple usb drives to move our backup system onto  ;)

    Nicolai, what do you know, they are multiplexed which means it's a completely different issue altogether.

    I am currently trying a restore of another information store and will see if the same issue occurs.   I will post logs and job details when I have them.

  • user022013's avatar
    user022013
    Level 4
    11 years ago

    Also goes to show you can't rely on information from some people.  The exchange server is 2007 running on Win2003 R2.  Don't know if this makes a difference.  Probably not.

    We have had successful restores in the past.

  • Nicolai's avatar
    Nicolai
    Moderator
    11 years ago

    You can see if a backup image is multiplexed by using the bpimagelist command and look for field 33.

    1=multiplxed

    0=non multiplxed

    http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH5584

    it is not super user friendly because you need to know the bpimage command and some basic text manipulation tools. On UNIX those are direct available, but Windows is a bit more difficult.

    TIP: Pass the output from bpimagelist to windows finstr command

    bpimagelist -hoursago 24 | findstr IMAGE

     

     

  • user022013's avatar
    user022013
    Level 4
    11 years ago

    Thanks everyone,  I just looked at the media status which tells me the media was multiplexed.  That answers that question.  The issue with the actual restore turned out to be a bad media.