Restore taking a long time?

[ali_hassan]

Hi Guys,

Not sure what is going on here .. I am trying to restore a 193 Bytes files just as a test to an alternate location and I see the restore job running and active but it seems to be running for like 30 mins now and still going... this is the NDMP backup which I am trying to restore to an alternate location on the same NDMP server.

I have a seperate NDMP backup job running simultaneously but I dont think that should matter... I have a feeling that its trying to read all the data from the tape?

I am using Backupexec 2012... 

Thanks

A

[ali_hassan · Accepted solution]

Ok the question has been answered... the restore finally completed after 42 mins and restored the 193 Byte file!

This is interesting wonder what would happen if I had to retore like 200 GB!

-A

[VJware]

Is the tape storage connected directlt to the filer ? Is the option "Enable Direct Access Recovery" enabled in the restore job ?

[maurijo]

Also a NDMP backup has to stage the entire file to then extract your 193kb file, this is a disadvantage of NDMP.

You should perform restore testing anyway

[ali_hassan]

Thanks for the pointer.. looks like NDMP works in its own special way so cant really complain I guess...Anyway I have to restore a 10Gb folder now to validate my backups... so now that I know how it works I can just sit back and let it do its own thing...

[maurijo]

You are restoring from tape, so it will always stage the entire backup. Its not NDMP dependand

[Larry_Fine]

You are restoring from tape, so it will always stage the entire backup. Its not NDMP dependand

Can you clarify that statement please?  I believe that I have restored many files from tape without staging.

[maurijo]

GRT restore from tapes is always staged... that's just the way it works.

[Larry_Fine]

You didn't mention GRT.  My point is that I don't think that ALL restores are GRT restores.  When restoring NTFS files from a simple NTFS file backup on tape, no disk staging should  be needed.

[maurijo]

OP clearly states that he is trying to restore a single 196 bytes file from his NDMP backup..so that is a GRT restore.

What you say is correct, when you restore full backups it is not staged...

[Larry_Fine]

OP clearly states that he is trying to restore a single 196 bytes file from his NDMP backup..so that is a GRT restore.

I disagree that this is a GRT restore simply because it is from NDMP.  Restoring a file from a file based backup is not GRT.  The OP is probably experiencing the NDMP box doing internal filtering to get to the one file he wants, which takes time & resources on the NDMP box, but has nothing to do with BE.  There is no mention of GRT or staging in the NDMP section of the admin guide.  If there is documentation that shows GRT is related to NDMP, I would like to learn.

Ali, what type/brand of NDMP server are you using and how it the tape library connected to it?  That probably has some impact on how quickly the NDMP box can extract one file for a restore.

[maurijo]

You are wrong. Scratch GRT or anything related to it, then it still needs to be staged. This is coming from tape and he wants one file so it has to be staged..

An NDMP restore coming from tape has to be staged...

Even call it file backups from which you restore this one file, if it comes from tape it WILL be staged to disk to extract that one file. Doesn't matter which technology is backed up.

And I did not say that this is GRT simply because it is NDMP. You have to read my answer again I guess...