BUExec 2010 R3, NDMP and Snapshot restore

[Andrew_Katafias]

Greetings. We have a NetApp FAS2240, and I've created test CIFS shares on the alotted volume. For testing, I'm using the 60 day trial version of NDMP before installing 2012 (waiting for the vendor and license). We are not live yet. We're basically is test mode before the live changeover.

Right now, I use a B2D2T sequence. The tape drive is an older PV114T, and I'm using all 8 slots as a single partition. I do a backup of the shnapshots on this schedule:

Midnight - full

8AM, Noon, 4PM, 8PM - incremental.

As each B2D is completed, the files are copied to tape.

I've deleted some files in the CIFS shares, and now I want to test the restore functionality. The test server doesn't have a lot of hard drive space, so I set the backup jobs to "overwrite" and the tape job to "append".

When I go to conduct a restore, I run it like a standard restore, selecting the files/folders, etc. I select the tape volume (0001-0008) as the source. All other restore varialbles are standard.

When I run the restore job, BUExec doesn't try to use the tape drive, but instead goes directly to the backup folder. I don't know how to set the source as the tape drive/tape.

I'm new to NDMP, but experienced with BUExec.

Thanks in advance for any help and ideas.

[EliasA]

Andrew,

When a restore is being done where there were at least two backups of the same data, you should be able to see the list of available restorable backup sets to chose from.  The default would be the one “closest” as in this case, the B2D, however you can select the backup set that went to tape.

When doing a restore, Backup Exec always will go to disk if disk exists regardless if you selected the tape for restore.  I would suggest that you delete the B2D backup set if they do not need it any longer (if data is on tape) or allow BE to do the grooming of the Disk backup set.  At that point BE will restore from the only remaining tape copy of the data.

I have also forwarded this to our engineering team for further research as I believe it should honor your device selection regardless of the data existing in 2 different places.

[Andrew_Katafias]

Elias,

Thanks for the reply. I did find one way around the "forced" disk restore. In the restore job properties, instead of "view by resouce", I selected "view by medi". From there. I was bale to selct the correct date and time that I wanted to restore. It's cumbersome, but at least I'll be able to do a tape restore.

The test media server doesn't have as much HD space as my other production media servers, so I have the CIFS snapshots overwritten as a matter of policy.