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Bare Metal Restores - do they expire

LeeClayton
Level 5
I was testing BMR's a few months back which all worked ok but last week I started testing the same server to do a restore but when I did a Prepare to Restore it failed instantly (didn't note error at time), could it have failed because when I did the initial BMR backup I set the rentention to ONE Month?
Maybe it just got corrupt, anyway, I performed a BMR backup over the weekend and this morning the restore is working ok again
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

AmolV
Level 5
BMR backup consists of two parts:
1. The Client's configuration information.
2. The Data that gets backed-up owing to the "ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES" backup selection.

Of these, the configuration information does not expire, it remains there in the BMR Database until deleted.
But the second part, i.e. the data of the system, is handled by NBU by its usual expiry methods.

But for a successful restore, configuration information as well as the data is needed and in your case, the latter was not available since it had expired, hence the error in PTR.

Talking about connections between client's configuration information and data backup-images, have you checked out the PIT-Restore functionality of BMR? Its a useful feature if you want to restore to a configuration that is not "current" but rather some old one and you are fortunate enough to have a full-backup image for the same.

HTH,
Amol.

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6 REPLIES 6

Abesama
Level 6
Partner
It just collects a little more additional information when backup is performed - it does expire the same, yes.

I don't use BMR tho... I only know it by theory, hehe

A

AmolV
Level 5
BMR backup consists of two parts:
1. The Client's configuration information.
2. The Data that gets backed-up owing to the "ALL_LOCAL_DRIVES" backup selection.

Of these, the configuration information does not expire, it remains there in the BMR Database until deleted.
But the second part, i.e. the data of the system, is handled by NBU by its usual expiry methods.

But for a successful restore, configuration information as well as the data is needed and in your case, the latter was not available since it had expired, hence the error in PTR.

Talking about connections between client's configuration information and data backup-images, have you checked out the PIT-Restore functionality of BMR? Its a useful feature if you want to restore to a configuration that is not "current" but rather some old one and you are fortunate enough to have a full-backup image for the same.

HTH,
Amol.

Stumpr2
Level 6
The configuration does not expire but it may become obsolete. Remember to include updates to the BMR with configuration management whenever they schedule OS/platform upgrades/changes.

LeeClayton
Level 5
I just want a one-off BMR for all my windows servers just in case one day i may need it, therefore, from the replies I guess I need to make the retention level on the one FULL BMR that i do for each server set to inifinity so it doesn't expire, is this correct???

AmolV
Level 5
Sorry, didnt see this query earlier.
Its adviseable to keep the BMR Backup up-to-date with your system configuration and data to ensure a clean restore.
Now, this does not mean that every backup has to be a full backup.
For the BMR enabled Policy, you can set it to take a full backup, say, once a month and take a incremental backup daily. And the data collected over one month, I guess can be kept for 2-3 months suing the retention period methods.
This way your BMR config and data needed for a proper system restore remains up-to-date and does not cause too much space overhead as well and the incremental backups would be faster too.
Was this useful?

HTH,
Amol

LeeClayton
Level 5
Hi, yes thanks, not all our policies perform all local drives backups so not easy to implement this so for now I'm going to do a one off all local drive backup for all servers and leave the rentention level to inifinity, our servers don't change that much so i think this will be fine "if" we ever need to do a BMR