Restoring BKF Files from Tape

[Brian_Pavnick_2]

Hello,

In the past we experienced some serious issues while running tape duplication jobs. After several calls into Symantec about these errors we decided to scrap duplication jobs entirely and sent the disk-to-disk BKF files to tape directly. This data would have been only accessed if a disaster were to happen and we needed to restore the entire backup environment.

Unfortunately, a customer over ruled our processes and is requiring 1 individual file from tape archive. My thought on restoring this data is to:

1.) Stop BE Services

2.) Rename the current catalog folder

3.) Create a new catalog folder.

4.) Start the BE Services

5.) Restore the BKFs from tape

6.) Catalog the BKFs

7.) Restore the data

8.) Stop the BE Services

9.) Wipe the new catalog and rename the old

10.) Start the BE Services 

My question and concern is, will cataloging these BKFs cause any issues with my Media Sets especially since the BKFs will have the same file names as existing BKFs BE is writing to? Should I make a backup of my BE Database and restore it once I am done with step #9?

Thanks!

Brian

[Ken_Putnam]

Only additions I have are

1)   Step 4a  Inventory the tape

      Step 4b  Catalog the tape

      (I know: picky,  picky   )

2)   See http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/272886.htm  Symantec recommeds starting with no catalog folder at all between new and old (to clear the index I guess)

will cataloging these BKFs cause any issues with my Media Sets especially since the BKFs will have the same file names as existing BKFs BE is writing to?

that's the whole purpose of creating a clean \Catalogs folder, so duplicate media don't step on each other

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 06-11-2008 01:15 PM

[Brian_Pavnick_2]

Thanks for the reply Ken. So, media data retention, media set location pointers, etc. are stored in the catalog? Not the SQL Database? I just want to be clear on this.

Thanks again for your time and effort on this.

Regards,

Brian

[Ken_Putnam]

All that info is kept in the database. 

The catalog only contains info about each media with pointers to the database for those things, not the info itself

Message Edited by Ken Putnam on 06-11-2008 01:35 PM

[Brian_Pavnick_2]

I have never had good luck with Cateloging anything in BE10D and this time is no exception. So, I did the following:

1.) Backed up my Catalg/DB

2.) Wiped and created new Catalog/DB

3.) INventoried/Cataloged and Restored BKFs from tape

4.) Moved all BKFs into one folder

5.) Created a drive for that folder

6.) Inventoried folder

7.) Started to catalog BKFs

First of all, the system, "dies" if I try to run multople Catalog jobs at a time (mind you we have 500+ bkfs to catalog). Second, if I limit one job to run at a time on the drive majority of the catalog jobs are failing. If they do not fail, they will fall into a "Communication stalled" status, etc. After several failures and or stalls the "Job Engine" may stop and or the server may go into a "paused" status. I am having to spend hours upon hours babying the system to make sure that after a catalog completed (failure or success) that the system doesn't stop working due to the Job Engine stopping or the Server state going into a "paused" status.

Seriously, this is going to take days! Just for one file.

I would go back to using duplication jobs, but, those were a nightmare to manage since they would fail almost daily (data consitency failures) + it extends the time backups are running into the day because the it mounts a tape for 'each job' (we create jobs for every server, application, and database and have over 150 jobs running each night... thats 150 mounts on the tape drive which at around 2 mins / mount that is 5 hours worth of the tapes mounting.)

[Ken_Putnam]

yeah, getting restored BKF files to work is a real pain

Which is why DUPLICATE is the preferred method

Looks like you are between a rock and a hard place

(Does it really matter if DUPLICATE jobs run through the day?  On a dedicated media server you should be able to run DUPs all day.  It may mean that MON tapes don't go offsite until WED rather then TUE, but if it means that you can actually use them to recover data ....)

[Brian_Pavnick_2]

Thanks for your help Ken,

Fortunately, after hours upon hours of cataloging BKF's a version of my actual BE catalog was available for restore. So, I restored the catalog and then I was good to go to restore the file for my customer.

Moving forward, I have setup a policy and media set dedicated for backing up my catalog to dedicated media. This way the only cataloging I will need to do is the catalog tape iteself.

Thanks!

Brian