System State Restore failing

[Mick_Duffin]

Hi,

We have server 2008 AD environment we one DC and one Exchange Server, we perform a full backup on these servers each night with Backup exec 2012, the backups complete successfully. To make sure the backups are Ok I wanted to perform a test restore, to do this I setup a test lab on our VM server, below are the steps i have done so far.

Create seperate network

Performed basic installation of Server 2008.

Installed trial version of BE 2012

Cataloged and Inventoried Tapes ( we are using RDX drives )

Restored filesysyem to DC ( no reboot )

Tried to restore the System State but each time I try I get the error:

Final error 0xe0001203 - An error occurred while creating or accessing the directory specified for this operation. Check to make sure that the B2D folder and or the temporary path specified of this operation are valid.

And also

Restore:

An error occurred creating or accessing the directory C:\TEMP specified for this operation. Ensure that the directory is accessible and can be written to.

I've checked this and the directory is there and the local admin on the server has full control of it.

Has anyone seen this before and know how to get the restore working?

Regards,

Mick.

[CraigV]

...if this is a VM with GRT-based backups, then C:\Temp refers to a drive on the media server itself, not the VM you're trying to restore too.

Check those settings for the temporary staging location on the restore job, and point it to a directory with enough disk space and then try again.

Thanks!

[Mick_Duffin]

Thanks for your reply Craig, 

Couple of things I didn't mention is that the DC that I'm restoring is also the media server and the original servers that are backed up are physical servers, I'm just restoring to VM as I have no spare physical servers.

Could the issue be that i need a different server for the media server? I had read that its possible to restore over the media server?

I will try to use another different VM for the media server.

Mick.

[CraigV]

...you can restore over the media server but risk corrupting it in this case. If there is an AV installed on the VM, disable it and try again...

[Mick_Duffin]

Thanks Craig,

There is no AV installed, I'm going to try the restore from scratch, see if that makes any difference.

Are there any step by step guides to restoring a 2008 AD and also 2010 Exchange with backup exec 2012? would be useful to make sure how I'm doing it is correct.

Regards,

Mick.

[CraigV]

...if a DC then you'd need to put it into some sort of recovery mode. Check the Microsoft site about this and it will tell you how to recover a DC.

Thanks1

[pkh · Accepted solution]

1) You cannot do a manual recovery to a VM.  You would not be able to boot up the recovered server because of missing/wrong drivers.

2) If you want to recover to a VM, then you should use the B2V facility to do the recovery.

3) To recover to dissimiliar hardware, you would need to use SDR which allows you to load the appropriate drivers for the new hardware.

4) To recovery to similiar hardware, then take a look at this document

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH212802

Although they are for BE 2014, they are still relevant for BE 2012.

[Mick_Duffin]

Thanks for all your help with this, in the end we went down the SDR route, it was so easy ( as long as you have the correct disks for the server )

Thanks again for your help.

Mick.