Disaster Recovery on upgraded BE11d installation

[Hywel_Mallett]

I was wondering if anyone else had come across this problem I am faced with...

On BE10d, when doing a Manual Local Disaster Recovery (no IDR), you'd restore the BE Media Server, and at the restart BE would take care of the MSDE installation files, and restore its own BE database file. It just worked.

On a BE11d media server, installed from scratch, you restore the BE Media Server. At the restart the SQL Express installation files are missing, so you rename them and remove the read-only attribute (as documented in the disaster recovery for SQL section of the Administrator's Guide). Then restart, and BE takes care of restoring its own BE database file. Clunky, and not as smooth as BE10d, but it does work.

On a BE 11d media server, which was upgraded from BE10d, it all goes wrong. Restore the BE Media Server. At the restart the SQL Express installation files are missing, so you rename them and remove the read-only attribute (as documented in the disaster recovery for SQL section of the Administrator's Guide). Then restart, and in the Event Viewer there are messages saying the database was restored (Event ID 18267), immediately followed by a message saying the BE device and media service could not start because Database Recovery failed (Event ID 58068). The BEDB.bak files were successfully restored, and can be found in the Backup Exec\Data folder.

Anyone else had the same problem?

For that matter, has anybody else actually tested the DR process?!

[Ben_L_]

I have not run across this issue when testing a DR of my media servers, but I not recall if I have testing one that was upgraded from 10d.  If you want wait a bit, when I get some free times this week I'll see if I can take a look into that.  If you can give me an brief outline of the steps you followed, that would help me a bunch.

[Hywel_Mallett]

Hi Ben,

What do you know? As soon as I post on here, the process works! This is after (literally) weeks of testing.

I would appreciate an answer to this question, as it's not covered in the Administrator's Guide. When installing the temporary version of BE (used for the first restore), it is installed to a non-default location. Should SQL also be installed to a non-default location? In my testing it doesn't seem to matter either way, but I'd appreciate some official advice.

Also, is the manual renaming of the SQL Express files a normal requirement? It didn't used to be on BE10.

[Ben_L_]

Should SQL also be installed to a non-default location?
This does not matter, I've tested with leaving it in the default and moving it to a different location the restore worked the same way each time.

Is the manual renaming of the SQL Express files a normal requirement?
Yes, we can not overwrite the database files in our own instance of SQL while Backup Exec is using them.  This should of been the same for 9x,10x, and 11x

[Hywel_Mallett]

Ben, I understand what you say about not being able to overwrite the database files while BE is using them, but with BE10d I never had to rename the SQL files.

Investigating further reveals the following:

1. During the DR process if you install the SQL database to the default location, it says it will install to: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL$BKUPEXEC

2. On my production server, the above folder does exist, and the master, model etc files are in the Data subfolder, as you'd expect.

3. However, when you do the initial, temporary installation, the SQL data actually appears to be installed in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQL and the data files are in the Data subfolder.

I don't know whether this is by design, or just a flaw. It's not quite what I expected...

As a result, it's not surprising that there are no .mdf or .ldf files for the restored version of SQL, as they weren't put there by the temporary SQL installation.

As an aside, though this process failed to work for me for a considerable time, I think what made the difference was that I backed up the SQL Express databases using the BE SQL agent, which generated newer $IDR files.

If SQL Express is updated (such as with a service pack), would the old, default $IDR files fail to work?