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NDMP restore - Can you restore from a partial tape set?

dfiore
Level 3

Lets say I have a NDMP job that spanned 10 tapes.  If one of my tapes becomes corrupt will I still be able to restore the data from the other 9 tapes or is the whole set lost.     

4 REPLIES 4

Joshua_Kane
Level 6
Employee

I guess the first question will be if the catalog is still present on your system.  If you still have the catalog on the system, you will be able to see the selections in the Backup Exec UI.  If you can see this, you should be able to select the files you need, and if they are on valid tapes, they can be restored.

 

Thanks,

Joshua

 

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

I believe that it is a bit more restrictive than that.  BE will have to read the tapes until it finds the file to be restored.  If the file is on tape 6 and the damaged tape is tape 2, then BE will not be able to get pass tape 2, thus you cannot restore the file even though tape 6 is not damaged.

dfiore
Level 3

We are just looking at the DR scenario.   Lets say my server goes down and I need to catalog and restore my tapes in another site.  I beleve i can do the restore of files backed up in NTFS, but i cant seem to do this with NDMP restores.    Does anyone know if there is anything documenting the fact that I need the whole set?  

 

I am going to do a test when my 10 TB job finishes today or tomorrow.   

teiva-boy
Level 6

You should look at a deduplication appliance (e.g. datadomain, exagrid, quantum, etc)

Backup and save on disk, 2-4 weeks of retenion locally, replicate the last 1wk to DR.  Tape will be used for anything beyond those above periods.

Disk is more reliable than tape in this case, will provide quicker DR (That is why we backup right?!)  Products like DataDomain can dedupe NDMP just fine, others I'm not so sure or can only do certain brands only.