cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

'Auto Saved' files unrecoverable?

KameliaB
Level 4

Hey All,

I ran into an issue with a customer and came to the conclusion that NetBackup just will not recover "auto saved" files and those that were open. However, customer is asking if it backed up, it should be recoverable, which is a valid point. I could not find documentation to prove this and am hopping on here to see whether or not you can validate. Here is why:

  • customer came with an exit status 185, error log attached. Backups past 7 days are not recoverable. 
  • we changed net buffer size and created a touch file for restore size to smaller blocks from the linux media to the win client
  • we added CLIENT_NAME = <master FQDN> in the master bp.conf
  • validated the backup in catalog
  • after above steps, we restored the requested files and they failed with the same status. However, we were able to restore a spreadsheet from 2-weeks prior and verified it was from the same backup image of the two files.

Both files mentioned had "(Auto Saved)" in the file name and backed up a sister file with a '~' as a prefix. The fact we ran a file level restore from the same image and same directory, proved nothing was wrong with the backup. But am I correct in thinking these files are just pointer records and it's the admins' duty to exclude them from backup? 

4 REPLIES 4

davidmoline
Level 6
Employee

Hi @KameliaB 

The problem looks to be you are trying to restore a file from an Windows optimized backup (policy attribute "Enable optimized backup of Windows deduplicated volumes" checked) of a Windows deduplicated file system from MSDP. This is not supported for this type of backup and the source must be from Basic disk (the initial backup also must be sent to Basic disk).  

It may be possible to recover the data with the help from Veritas support. If the data is important log a support call and reference article 100032817. 

In the meantime, please review the requirements and target devices for these type of backups (it is detailed in the NetBackup Server Admin guide volume 1) to ensure you can recover files. At present it is unlikely that you would be able to restore any file from the backups of that file system.

Regards
David

Hi David, 

Thanks for responding. I ran into that article about NTFS dedups and asked the customer whether or not they were, he couldn't confirm or deny it. He assured it's a VM policy. I suggested running an image restore, no-go there too. I am going to circle back and verify if it is an NTFS/NDMP dedup setup. However, wouldn't that mean no other file should be restorable? I'll update you with what I hear.

Hi @KameliaB 

The point is a restore from a full backup is not guaranteed (and probably wont work). Restores from incremental backups should work as the incremental backup rehydrates the files (it is only the full backup that does funky stuff with the Windows dedupe file system).

And to your original question, there is nothing that special about the autosaved files to prevent them being restored (you just need to ensure that the backup is valid - which in this case it appears not to be).

Have fun.
David

We just verified that the policy is not an NTFS or NDMP dedup, nor is "optimized backups" enabled (it's actually greyed out). So, I am just sending him an exclusions list and explained that autosaved, autorecovered and ~ files will be backed up, but the backup validation occurs in the restore, so in essence it's a 'best effort' backup.