Hello
So it seems the BE 2012 lacks the ability to easily restore from duplicate tape jobs or linked tape jobs.
With linked tape jobs(duplicate to tape is the last stage of the jobs) the catalogue files in the .dr file for the recovery are only seen 1 week after, as the .dr file is made at the end of the full job vs the last stage of the job.
So for example:
After the full backup and with the linked duplicate stage completing, SDR only shows the orignal backup but not the duplicate. When inserting the SDR disk next week I am able to see the duplicate tape backup for previous week and orignal backup for current week.
Obviously, this is not acceptible.
If i need to use tapes that are offsite on the chance that our main disk storage is destroyed and BE server is also destroyed, i can only recover last weeks info using sdr. If BE is online, this is no issue as BE will have the current catalogue info needed.
We also have a job that duplicates 4 servers files to a single tape for off-site storage. This situation is worse, as no previous or current week catalogues are ever seen for this job in the sdr menu.
I have been attempting a work around but need a little assistance. My ideology is that since the duplicate jobs maintain the original .bkf file names, i should be able to use the full job's sdr catalogues and just point to the tape.
Yesterday I managed to do a sdr recover job by manually copying the .bkf's that were related to my chosen time stamp to an external hdd.(This was meant to mimic, the flat .bkf files that would be on a duplicate tape job.)
As the duplicate tape jobs don’t create a tiem accurate .dr file, I copied the .dr file from the full job(source of duplicate job) onto a usb key and used this.
The sdr recover job worked well, just a few issues / questions.
When sdr attempted to look for the .bkf's it gave an error of :
"XXX:\XXX\ is not a valid disk cartridge device. Select a valid disk cartridge device" when trying to select the backup sets from Disk Storage."
I was able to solve this by putting the .bkf’s in a BEData folder on my ext hdd, with a copied Changer.cfg and folder.cfg from the main disk storage.
I also had to put a BEControl folder with the BESCF file in it, before the error would clear and I could continue with my restore.
So my question is. What specifically is in the changer, folder and BESCF files? I need to know this too know if I can use an older version of these files for the restore, or if these config files must always be new and fresh(most current). I can always make a copy for offsite to be included with the sdr boot disk I make.
Secondly, would the sdr be able to read .bkfs that were compressed, either when put onto tape(if reading again from tape for restore), or when the actual .bkf files were made??
Thirdly, and this relates to the first point, do the duplicate tape jobs populate the tape with the changer.cfg, folder.cfg and BEControl foldersand therefore I don’t need to worry about question 1??
Thanks for the help and reading this quite long post :))
Hopefully the answers will help others as well. I realize many people make backups and blindly trust that they will work in a restore job.......
