Need to migrate backup sets from one dedupe store to another

[Gordon_Fecyk]

After much fighting with slow NAS products, I built a custom NAS server to act as my dedupe store. The new NAS has enough computing power and storage to do IOPS that exceed the local disk on my media server, never mind that of the old NAS devices.

The problem is what to do with my old tape backups and dedupe stores on the older NAS devices. I want to duplicate my backups to the new dedupe store on the new NAS. Most of it is OS backups of multiple virtual machines, which is where dedupe shines, so I don't expect much wasted space.

Copying backup sets from my tapes to the new dedupe store is straightforward, and I can then use the tapes to do disaster recovery backups of the dedupe store. But how do I copy backups from an older dedupe store to another when I can't mount two dedupe stores on the same media server? Can I install another media server and use a temporary license for the server and dedupe store, and then replicate the backup sets between the media servers?

Part of the challenge is the old dedupe stores (there are two) were made on Backup Exec 2010 R3, and the current media server runs BE 2014 SP2. I know I can attach an old dedupe store to a new media server, and it would take some time to convert it, but I'd be OK with that. I imagine inventorying the old stores would take several days, and I'm OK with that too.

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[CraigV]

Hi Gordon,

Check the TN below and see if helps:

https://support.symantec.com/en_US/article.TECH160832.html

Thanks!

[Gordon_Fecyk]

Sorry, no, TECH160832 tells me how to move a dedupe store from one drive letter to another. Not how to copy backup sets from one dedupe store to another.

I would be able to hand-copy one of my two old dedupe stores to the new NAS, even if it would take 22 hours or so, and follow TECH160832's instructions. But I wouldn't be able to copy the second dedupe store to the new NAS the same way.

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[CraigV]

To be honest, it would simply be a case of moving the dedupe folder to the new NAS. The new NAS doesn't currently hold a dedupe folder, and you can't have 2 dedupe folders on a media server as you rightly stated. To duplicate to another dedupe folder on another media server you need Optimized Deduplication in place and then might as all use the new media server too.

Reread the TN and log a call with Symantec to verify it if needed.

THanks!

[Gordon_Fecyk]

I ended up opening a support call with Symantec on this. Nathan from their support team verified that I could set up a central administration server and use that to copy backup sets between two media servers. He further verified that I could mount an old dedupe store to a second media server so that I could copy backup sets from it.

So I built a second media server and I mounted one of my old dedupe stores to it. The server is in the middle of a catalog job, and I'm already seeing the backup sets stored on it. Because the Buffalo NAS is so terribly slow, this is going to take a while, but once it's done I'll join the two media servers (my production one and this second, temporary one) through a central administration server. Then I'll duplicate the old backup sets.

One of the old stores already had an inventory error, but the media server worked through it. I think it was just as well to create a fresh dedupe store on this new NAS.

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