Backup to Disk - what if disk fails?

[Ross_Smith_2]

Our backups run to a NAS storage device and are duplicated to tape. Does anyone know how BackupExec copes when the disk device fails?

eg: Worst case scenario is that we have a catastrophic failure on a NAS device and loose all the backups on it.

We have tape duplicates of all the data, is there any way to use these to restore the NAS device? A normal restore doesn't seem feasible, but what happens if I duplicate the tape back to the NAS?

If we cannot restore the NAS device, is there any way to make BackupExec aware that the files are no longer available to restore from? ie. Is there any way to update BackupExec to remove all the catalogs that are no longer valid?

Ross

[Rohit_Sonawale]

Hi,

Thank you for posting your query,


While restoring the data from Duplicate backup it will store the data which is backuped up.

However as you need the backed up data on NAS too then in that case we would suggest you to perform Duplicate backup job on Tape and store it on NAS.


We hope this information helps, if you have any other questions please respond to the post and we will be more than happy to assist you further.

[Ross_Smith]

That reply barely makes sense, and what sense I can make of it bears no relation to my original question!

What on earth do you mean by performing a duplicate job on tape and storing it on NAS?? And how is this related to restoring the data on the NAS device when it fails??

Ross

[Kerm]

A more appropriate reply to your query might be to look to your BEX setup and consider what happens when BEX target media failes. If you have a standalone tape drive and it fails, no backup. If you have a cascaded drive pool with multiple tape drives, expect BEX to failover to the next drive simply because it is available. (assuming scratch tape loaded, on-line, etc.)

If you haved backed data up to your NAS, the BEX save sets should be visable there. If you have those save sets on tape they could be restored to your NAS (post repair and assumming connectivity, etc.).

If BEX could not select the new copy of the save set using its old catalogs, you would need to catalog each restored save set on NAS.

I'm not sure how BEX would react to (and how you would reliably select) the catalogs to delete. I've recently discovered that BEX 10.0 will allow identical media labels in a media set (I'm sure the internal labels are different). It's hard to quickly determine which tape is which from the catalog.

Pick a save set on NAS. Delete it. Restore it from tape and see what happens. Shouldn't bee too hard to test without waiting for your NAS to ralph a hairball.

[ashwin_pawar]

If you are backing to DISK (NAS) and subsquently performing duplicate backup to TAPE and incase the NAS crases it will result in FAILURE and no data will be duplicated to TAPE.


During duplicate backup BE read the catalog information and looks for the source device which is in this case (NAS) so that same backset can be duplicated to TAPE. but if it does not find the source device(due to crash of NAS) it will fail.



As far as deleting catalog is concerend it has to be done MANUALLY you can delte in from x:\program files\veritas\BE\Nt\Catalogs. (You can go to restore selections --right click --b2d and check the media ID and correspondingly delete it from catalog files in the catalog folder.