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BE Restore scanning all media

AKIRA-NX-01
Level 2

BE15 on Windows Server 2012 R2:  I am running a restore job to recover 1 file (97kb).  I created the restore job by selecting restore from Backup Set (incremental).  The issue I have is that BE is not searching the media associated with the selected backup set.  It started searching media from the full that occurred 3 days ago.

The full contains over 180 media files whereas the incremental only contains 3 media files.  This is taking longer than it should.  The Backup Storage is an EMC DataDomain - 2500 - Using DDBoost.

Is this normal?  Is there a better way?

3 REPLIES 3

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Did you backup a VM with GRT or was it a direct file system backup - GRT of a VM has to get at all of the media from the full fowards through all of the incrementals up unti the one you are restoring from.

 

Also if the DD device is seen as a VTL and not as a disk device? If it is seen as a tape, then a GRT set will have to stage all the media back to a temp staging location on disk as it won't be able to mount the complete vmdk/vhd from what is emulating a serial access device.

Finallly if not GRT  of a VM but a complete backup from file system, did you start the restore wizard as a point in time selection or as a backup set selection - the point in time selection might try to access all the media even though the file is only on one.

Basically depending on your scenario, your described symptoms may or may not be expected

AKIRA-NX-01
Level 2

The backup is of a very large VM with GRT.  Based on your response, this is normal operation.

Since this restore process is staging and reading all of the media.  If I require another restore prior to the next full, will BE take that into consideration and skip over media that was already staged thereby expediting the next restore?

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Nope - the staging image is removed at the end of the restore job, if you know you need to do more than one restore then duplicate the backup set to a Backup to Disk and start the restores from the Backup to Disk based sets

Basically GRT restore from disk (or Deduplication Device that is handled as disk) does not need staging as can mount the images for full and incremental sets directly. It should be noted that this process still accesses all the media it is just quicker because of the access speeds from the disk. So this type of backup storage is designed to cover day to day, more frequent restore requests against backup data from relatively recent timescales

GRT from tape (or devices handled as tape) has to stage every piece of media from the full and incremental back to the disk so that they can be mounted.  Really best used for complete DR or less frequent requests for restores going back longer periods of time.

 

The strategies are therefore usually:

Do GRT backups to disk, where the disks have enough capacity to cover your short term restore needs (2 weeks or maybe 1 months woth of backups for instance)

Duplicate the sets on disk to tape storage for DR planning and longer term restore needs