Restore from Western Digital External Hard Drive

[554500989]

I backed up my server to a Western Digital External Hard Drive. When I use the IDR to restore the server, the server is unable the date on the external hard drive.

Has anyone encountered this, and how can I fix it. I am assuming that the external hard drive is ok to use, since BE allows you to backup to disk.

[Abhinav_Bindroo]

It appears that you are trying to perform local IDR using backup-to-disk folder.

it is not possible to perform Local IDR using external USB drive. You can use IDR and Backup to disk folder to recover a remote machine but a local Backup to Disk file cannot be used for Local IDR

Reference

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/253655.htm

[Nicole_Green]

Could you please clarify or point me to the documentation on how the recovery aspect from USB hard drive works?

Do I have to install BackupExec Local on the machine that has the USB drive attached and then install Backup Exec Remote on a different machine that I also am backing up to the USB drive?

Here's my scenario:
I have 3 servers: 1 Production server, 1 fail-over server, 1 test server

I plan on attaching the external USB hard disk to the fail-over server (since it barely ever is being used and has nothing running against it, while the production server is up).
I want to install BackupExec 10d on the fail-over server to back up the production server (with SQL databases) as well as the fail-over server and the test server.
Let's say one hard disk on my production server fails and I need to get a replacement one (I do have RAID 3, so everything should be able to be up and running with new hard disk). But let's assume I lost some files that I need to recover from the external HD on the fail-over server. How can I use IDR? Do I need to install anything (like BackupExec Remote) on the production server?

If you could shine some light on this procedure for me, I'd greatly appreciate it.

[Ken_Putnam]

IDR is for a complete replacement of the OS on new hardware.

if you just want to restore some files to the production server from the standby/media server, then just do a restore from the B2D folder

[Nicole_Green]

Sorry for my lack of knowledge and experience with this but may I ask some more questions?

Regarding IDR: What I've read is that IDR is not supported from an external USB drive because it is not recognized on boot-up as a mounted drive, correct? So, in the case of disaster recovery... could I just load the same OS on the new hard drive and then perform a full recovery once the USB drive is recognized again? What type of backup needs to be performed in order to recover a hard disk completely?

Regarding file restores: you are calling the standby, the media server. That's just Symantec terminology for the server that has the backup device (in this case an external USB HD) attached?

Also, what do I need to install on the standby server? Backup Exec Local?

Do I need to install anything on the servers that I'm backing up or is it just a matter of specifying the files and their locations?

I realize this is probably off-topic, so if you want me to repost in a separate forum/thread, I'd be OK with that. If so, could you please direct me to what category my question belongs into?

Thanks in advance for your insight.

[Ken_Putnam]

Yes, to use a USB backup disk, you would have to install a basic OS and Backupexec, and then do a standard manual Disaster Recovery. (See the admin guide)

yes, the media server is the one that has BackupExec loaded

to backup remote servers, you need one copy of the remote agent for each one. If you also backup Exchange or SQL, you would need one license for each server, but that includes a RemoteAgent license

this forum is fine for general as well as specific questions about Backup Exec

[Nicole_Green]

By remote servers do you mean off-site servers or does that apply to every server on the network I'm trying to back up? Meaning that every server that does not have the backup exec local installed is considered a remote server?

So, for my 3 servers, I would run a remote agent on the production and test servers and the local backup exec app on the media server?

I do have SQL server running on all servers. Does that mean we need to buy 3 SQL agents?

Right now (or better, prior to our Storageworks tape drive dying) we had a license for backup exec 9.0 and a SQL server agent license. At that time we only had that one server.

Am I correct by saying that we only need one license for Backup Exec 10d to run on the media server and then buy 3 SQL server agent licenses and 2 remote agent licenses?

[Ken_Putnam]

Remote meaning any server the media server can see, but not the media server itself

3 SQL servers, 3 SQL serials

You would not need to purchase any remote agents. each SQL/Exchange/oracle/Notes serial includes a remote license.

And yes, onlyy one BackupExec Server serial for one media server

[Nicole_Green]

Thank you very much. You've been most helpful.

I also appreciate the speedy response time to all my posts. Thank you!

[Nicole_Green]

OK, I have a couple more questions I didn't think of earlier.

Scenario: I don't backup our test server and only have the 2 servers, the production server and the media server. I decide to run SQL database backups using the SQL Server utilities and just save the backup and transaction logs to the server hard disk. (So I won't use Backup Exec to back up my SQL databases)
I then only use Backup Exec on the Media server to backup the harddisk or specified directories/files of the production server as well as the media server.

What will I need license-wise? Backup Exec 10d for Windows Servers and then some license for the remote server? Since I won't be using SQL server agent, is there a product just for the remote agent without SQL agent?

Thanks in advance for your clarification on this.

[Ken_Putnam]

In that case you would need one copy of the media server license and one remote agentMessage was edited by:
Ken Putnam