cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

SDR off

Dipesh
Level 3

If I de-select and then select individual but all components, the 'Simplified Disaster Recovery' indicator turns to 'OFF'.  Shall I be able to recover my server in case of disaster?

59 REPLIES 59

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

When SDR is off, you will not be able to restore the server with SDR.  However, you can still do a manual recovery of the server.  The success of this recovery will depend on what files/folders you have excluded from the backup.  For example, if you exclude the Windows directory, obviously the recovery will fail.  For this reason, SDR does not allow you to exclude anything.  Just in case, you exclude a critical component.

Gayatri_Kokje
Level 3
Employee

SDR icon will turn OFF if you de-select the root node checkbox next to your servername. Please make sure you select the server at this root node level so that the SDR icon is ON and you can recover your system in case of disaster.

The SDR icon will remain ON if you select this root node checkbox and then individually de-select the "non-critical" data volumes or the volumes hosting the disk storage devices.

 

Monster
Level 4

Most of us know what files are critical. For example, BE2012 cannot save certain temporary XML files that are created by antivirus software. Those files are not critical. Now I have to choose between.

  1. keeping explaining a customer, why backup jobs "fail", or
  2. excluding that file, denying me SDR, or
  3. uninstalling antivirus.

None of the above is truly a solution.

Dipesh
Level 3

Thanks all for replies to my query.  I am still not clear.  I am explaining what I have done again in little more clear detail:

I created a new backup job (full+incremental), deselected root node of server, and then selected all nodes under the root, i.e. all hard drives, system stat, and SQL Server instance, the SDR indicare turns to off. 

Now, my question is, in case of disaster, if I just boot the server with SDR Disk, and latest backup set created as above, will it recover everything as it was running before desaster?  As pkh's post, what is manual recovery?

Actually, I tested BackupExec 2012 with great success for individual file recovery to complete disaster recovery on the same hardware and OS platform.  After successful trials, I formated and re-installed server as final.  I couldn't understand, if it was working 100% ok in trial run, what kind of problem it experience after re-installation.

Thanks again for reading this much large post.

Dipesh

Gayatri_Kokje
Level 3
Employee

Hi Dipesh,

When you take backup of a system with the SDR icon ON, at the end of backup a .DR file is created for that system which is used in the disaster recovery process. After completion of the backup you will see a Full backup success alert and it will also advice you to copy that .Dr file to an alerate location as well.

When the system you are recovering has the backedup data locally attached, you can perform local recovery from the SDR wizard, during this process you need to provide the .dr file and the location of the backup sets.

When you are recovering a system which was backed up to a remote media server, during recovery you will perform Remote recovery and then point to the media server to perform the recovery.

For a sever recovery it would be necessary to have the .dr file.

This technote will provide you with the details:

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH180099

Is there a particular reason why you are un-checking the checkbox at the root?

You can check the root and still manage to keep the SDR icon ON by un-checking non-critical volumes.

By doing the above, you can have the .dr file created for the server.

Hope this solves your issue.

Thanks,

Gayatri

Dipesh
Level 3

Hello Gayatri,

I have been backing up to NAS.  I checked, my backup sets do not have .dr file. 

Actually, I had been receiving error something like, 'failed load config xml file' related to p2v, however, I am not converting my backups to virtual.  I followed as commented here: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-2012-exceptions-how-can-i-stop-them to uncheck root node of the server.

Dipesh

 

Gayatri_Kokje
Level 3
Employee

Hi Dipesh,

The .dr file is not generated as the SDR icon was off in your case, which is the expected behaviour.

Is the server being backedup a physical server or a Virtual machine?

What kind of disks does the machine have? Does it have atleast one locally attached disk drive (SCSI, SATA, IDE etc)

 

Thanks,

Gayatri

Dipesh
Level 3

Hi Gayatri,

The server being backed up is physical server running Windows 2008 Enterprise 32 Bit. It has 2 x 450 GB SAS Drives (Hardware RAID1).

The .dr file has obviously not been generated when SDR was off (in last attempts), but was not generated even when SDR was on but backup ended up with error for p2v xml (mentionedin my earlier post).

Thanks for immediate replies from your side.

Dipesh

 

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

When a job is not successful, the .dr file will not be created and this failed backup cannot be used for SDR recovery.  This is because if a critical file/folder cannot be backed up, then it is pointless to do any recovery.  Only upon successful completion and with SDR on, will the .dr file be created.  You would need to correct whatever is causing the job to fail.

As for manual recovery of a server, there is a chapter called Preparing for Disaster Recovery in the Admin Guide which tells you how to manually recover a server without using SDR.

Dipesh
Level 3

Hello,

Now, I selected root node for backup and ran full backup, it ended with error for p2v xml file:

Failed to load the configuration xml file.
C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Catalogs\PROSERVER\CatalogProcessTemporaryFolder\{5FE9B22B-D746-4D80-A7BA-E9F4CEB84C83}\p2v.xml

server.domain.com Backup-Full -- The job failed with the following error: Failed to load the configuration xml file.
 

but at the same time, .dr file has been generated and following message also has been logged:

You have successfully completed a backup job that includes all critical system components. The computer is now fully backed up.

I understand that now my server is fully backed up and I shall be able to recover it fully off disaster, but isn't there any way, I can get full success message?

Dipesh

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Excluding this file will make the error message go away.

Dipesh
Level 3

There is no such file there, the folder C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Catalogs\PROSERVER\CatalogProcessTemporaryFolder\{5FE9B22B-D746-4D80-A7BA-E9F4CEB84C83}\ is empty.

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

It could be a hidden file.  Try excluding the folder instead.

marcusolini
Level 5
Employee

Hi.  We need to determine if your server is configured as described in article: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH184002.  When able, please execute the following commands, capture the output, and post the output.  Ensure that the SELECT DISK and DETAIL DISK commands are done for all of the disk numbers output by the LIST DISK command.  Thank you.

(1) C:\>DISKPART

(2) DISKPART> LIST DISK

(3) SELECT DISK 0

(4) DETAIL DISK

(5) SELECT DISK 1

(6) DETAIL DISK

Dipesh
Level 3

Hello Marcusolini,

Please check following results off commands asked by you:

C:\Users\sysadmin>diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.0.6002
Copyright (C) 1999-2007 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: PROSERVER

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online       419 GB      0 B

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> detail disk

HP LOGICAL VOLUME SCSI Disk Device
Disk ID: C5E79E65
Type   : RAID
Bus    : 0
Target : 4
LUN ID : 0
Read-only  : No
Boot Disk  : Yes
Pagefile Disk  : Yes
Hibernation File Disk  : No
Crashdump Disk  : Yes

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     C   System       NTFS   Partition     98 GB  Healthy    System
  Volume 1     D   Vol1         NTFS   Partition     98 GB  Healthy
  Volume 2     E   Vol2         NTFS   Partition     98 GB  Healthy
  Volume 3     F   EDP          NTFS   Partition    126 GB  Healthy

DISKPART>

Hope this would help you understanding my setup.

Dipesh

 

rablack
Level 4

Hi,

I have the exact same problem - SDR fails with the p2v.xml error.

Excluding the folder automatically turns off SDR.

This is clearly no use.

I have tried creating a convert-to-virtual job along with the backup in an attempt to have the file created, but this does not work as there is no vmware or hyper-v environment for the server to connect to.

Please help,

Richard

saa515
Level 3

I am also having a similair problem.

 

When doing full backups of our servers (actually 3 servers are having this problem) the SDR light is on, the entire server is being backed up, but the jobs completes with an exception :

 

V-79-57344-42009 - Failed to load the configuration xml file.
 
D:\Backup Exec Catalogs\BACKUPSERVER\CatalogProcessTemporaryFolder\{C63B7D94-DF36-4CE4-B388-BC61E9CE7632}\p2v.xml
 
 
Because of this exception, I am not able to create a SDR disk. Above you mentioned to exclude this file from the backup selection. The path is the location of the backup exec catalogs, which are not available to uncheck in the backup selection menu (since they are not even on the same server)
 
Any ideas how to resolve this? Not being able to create SDR disks makes me extremely nervous, especially since one of the servers with this problem is our primary domain controller.
 
 
I've found these 2 articles related to the issue, but it looks as if there is no solution yet.
 
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH189081&actp=search&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1348173200181
 
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH184002
 
Does anyone know of a work around? All 3 servers that have this issue are physical servers, with Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x32.
 
 
 
Thank you,
 
Scott
 

rablack
Level 4

My server is also physical Win 2003 R2 32-bit. It has a locally attached LTO-3 tape drive and a single RAID array, which seems to exclude the knowledge base article which talks about unsuported device types.

I really need an answer to this, as it is preventing me from deploying BE in our environment, without SDR capability.

Thanks,

Richard

marcusolini
Level 5
Employee

Hi all,  Please review my previous post that requests DISKPART information.  Please also include the Backup Exec Job Log.  When able, collect this information and post it for review.  The most likely next steps will be to gather corresponding Backup Exec debug logs.  Thank you.