In case anyone else out there has run into this and is tired of knocking their heads against a wall...
Background
We have an older server running Backup Exec 10d. The decision was made to migrate our existing Backup Exec 10d installation to another server (better hardware). The question became, could we transfer ALL information (catalogs, job setup, policies, media sets, backup-to-disk directories, media ids) from one server to the other or would we be recreating the whole thing? More importantly - would we have to inventory over 300 tapes and figure out what media sets they went into?
As we have support, we ended up contacting Symantec with our question after searching the documentation and the forums. We found a few things that were close - such as documents 274778 and 275658 - but nothing let us retrieve all information.
Symantec originally wanted us to rename our new server to the same name as the current server, copy over all the files and then change the name of the new server again. We pointed out the major flaw with that - you can't have two computers with the same name on the same network at the same time. We wanted to be able to move back to the current server just in case - and all that renaming just made us a little nervous.
Our compromise was to bring up a virtual pc, copy over the necessary files and play around with renaming that one (and popping it on and off the network). That worked and made us much more comfortable before we played around with the live servers.
So if you need to transfer from one server to another with version 10d, follow the instructions in document 260054 with these caveats:
- When you get to step 16 (remove server name references in the registry), the registry value location has changed. You need to make this name change under HKLM\Software\Veritas\BEDatabase\Server Database Server Name. The value for that key will be your current server's name; change it to the new one.
- If you are using DLO... blow away or don't import the DLO key. You may then need to run a repair install of Backup Exec in order to get the DLO Administration Service running. We only have two people testing this option so we don't know yet what other implications there may be; we are assuming we will probably need to reinstall the client in order to get it working again.
Please note that if you miss a step or have to go back AFTER you have started the Backup Exec services (including the database engine), you will need to start over. I missed overwriting the bedb_data.mdf file and ended up having to recopy all the files, reimport the registry keys and then starting the services before things behaved.
By following these steps, we were able to retrieve our restore information, all job policies and setups, media sets, backup-to-disk directories and media ids. We have successfully run inventories, restores and backups since the transfer. Only time will tell if this was fully successful or just something that is working for now.
