Insufficient disk space when performing Granular restore.

[mari]

Hi,

I'm trying to perform a GRT restore of a single file from a virtual machine disk. When I attempt the restore it appears that BUE is restoring the entire virtual disk to C:\temp and eventually fails with an "insufficient disk space" error. I scanned the Admin Guide but didn't see anything stating that BUE must restore the .vmdk before restoring the individual file from GRT. Is this how the process works or am I missing something? It seems strange that the whole .vmdk would need to be restored just to pluck out a single file.

I'm running BUE 2010 R3 on Server 2008 R2, using the VVI agent with GRT enabled.

Thanks for your help!
Dennis

[Carlos_Quiroga]

Dear Sir:

In GRT restore operations from tape, BE must first mount the complete resource and then extract the particular items that you need to restore.

The BE options allow you to set the "staging" location for the restore.

[SuperBrain]

When performing a GRT restore from a sequential device (Tapes) it is required to stage the information on a Local disk first, than the required file is extracted from the staged copy on local disk and restored.

You can change the staging location :

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH187371 - How to change Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) temporary staging location for Backups and Restores (Backup Exec 2012)

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH171749 - How to change the default staging location for Granular backup and restore jobs. (Backup Exec 2010)

Also see : 

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO22650 - Recommended devices for backups that use Granular Recovery Technology

[mari]

Thank you for your responses. I was hoping there would be a more efficient process for a GRT restore, instead of having to stage the entire 2 TB virtual disk just to restore a 100 KB file.

[Colin_Weaver]

If you do GRT enabled backups to disk in the first place then it is efficient and a major reason why disk based backups with duplication to tape (if needed) is recommended

With a disk based backup we can just directly mount the backup data to access the individual items for restore.

[teiva-boy · Accepted solution]

If you do Backup to disk and duplicate to tape, problem solved, two fold!

1.  Backups are faster to disk.

2.  Restores are faster from disk.  

2.5, If the restore is from disk, you don't have to stage any data in the case of a GRT restore.

[mari]

Colin & teiva-boy,

I agree with you both 100%. We're still using tape as our primary media instead of disk. Until we move to disk as primary we'll have to live with ths.

Thanks!