NetBackup Exchange BMR

[Sajid_Siddiqui]

Hi,

I am using NetBackup appliance 5220 and taking backup of Exchange server with BMR option. Backup is successful when i restore the this BMR backup then only OS is restored, whereas as per my understanding it should restore Exchange DB as well with the OS. Or i need to manually restore Exchange DB after OS restoration from the BMR. 

If i have to manually restore the Exchange DB then is there any other way to restore Exchange DB with OS using BMR restore?

Regards,

Sajid

[mandar_khanolka]

BMR recovery can restore whole machine (OS + other non-OS file systems including your db as well).

By chance did you select "System Only recovery" option while doing BMR prepare to restore?

Also confirm your backup policy -> backup selection list. I hope you have added ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES clause to backup whole machine.

Though post-BMR recovery, DB integrity might not be there as BMR recovery is crash-consistent. For example, while backing up DB file, there might be some pending trasactions etc. In that case you can recover DB post-BMR restore by using DB app utils.

Best method widely used is, protect OS and application footprint (non-os fs) using BMR and use separate netbackup DB agent based policy to backup DB data file.

Then while recovery, first get machine back using BMR and further recover DB  from other agent based policy backup. This way you will get whole machine back with data integrity.

Few users have used BMR post-restore external procedure interface to automatically recover DB using other NB policy once machine comes up from BMr recovery. This external procedure is a customer .bat/.sh script which user needs to write his own and upload to BMR master server once. You can know about this well reading BMR admin guide.

Thanks.

Mandar

[Sajid_Siddiqui]

Thank you Mandar,

Yes i have selected All Local Drives in the selection list. Is this wrong? then what i need to select in the BMR policy.

Secondly what i understood is, we need to make a BMR policy with Exchange DB policy seperately and then i restore my machine at OS level and then create a .bat file for restoring exchange DB? am i right?

All i need is an automatic way of restoration of OS + Exchnage DB.

Regards,

Sajid

[mandar_khanolka]

ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES param is correct as it tells NB to take backup of all available file systems on that client.

You may want to confirm in NB admin GUI activity monitor if you see restore jobs for your non-OS file systems when you performed BMR restore of your client.

BTW is this Windows client? If yes, you may want to open Windows Configuration management on your client and open disk view and check if non-OS disks are in non-imported state. You may need to right click on them and say import. This will automatically show you the file systems on top of them. This is just a possibility happened in your case. Or it might be where recovery itself is not done. Did you check system-only bmr restore if you have done in PTR by mistake?

Yes, if you want to automate DB recovery in BMR restore itself from agent based NB backup policy then you can prepare such .bat script and register it as BMR firstboot type external procedure. Again I suggest you to refer bmr admin guide -> external procedure section to know on this better.

Thanks.

Mandar

[Mark_Solutions]

I have to be honest .. as far as I was concerned BMR would do your restore of your server only Once done and rebooted you then need to restore your exchange databases. Unless it has changed since i really looked at it last it cannot do it all in one go - apart from anything exchange needs to be put in the right mode to do such a restore which would need the BMR restore to reboot the server, setup exchange and then do the restore of the databases - never know it do that - same for SQL and any other applications Hope this helps