Drives reserved for restores

[H_Sharma]

Hello Experts,

We have backups happening at night. Sometimes we have urgent restore request. We have 8 drives. So is it possible 

1:- I want to reserve one drive for this activity. Is it possible?

2:- Is there any command so that i want to reserver one drive for restoration activity in the evening and release it whenever it is not requied. Like schedular up and down command

It would be very  helpful for restoration as all the jobs are in queued and we dont have free drives.

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

1: Not directly - as a work around you can reduce the "Max concurrent write" for the storage unit you need to restore from. You still need to wait for job to finish or cancel them (see 2 as well).

2: Same a 1 - but also run command "nbpemreq -suspend_scheduling" to disallow new backup to start. One the restore is running run "nbpemreq -resumne_scheduling".

[H_Sharma]

Thanks so much Nicolai really appericiate your prompt response.

But you see  if we have to stop the schedular 2nd option many backup would miss the window and then we need to re-fire these, More Work. Any other option :)

You guys are too smart, experts and U find the answers when there is no hope :) so expecting something from U from your treasure of vast knowledge and experience :) :) :) :)

[Marianne]

Nicolai has given you another option:

... you can reduce the "Max concurrent write" for the storage unit you need to restore from. 

This will allow one free drive for restores, but leave you permanently with 6 drives for backups.

You can also confirm that all filesystem policies have 'checkpoint' enabled. You can then kick in the restore, then suspend backups using one of the drives needed for restores. As soon as the restore is running, resume suspended backups. 
The backups will queue again and go active when the restore is fininshed.

Best solution possible is to implement disk backups and duplicate to tapes afterwards. 
Ensure enough disk space to keep a couple of days' backups on disk.
Backups to disk can run at the same time as restores from the same.

[Nicolai]

The point her is that you only suspend the scheduling of NEW jobs until the restore start.

Backup already runnign will not be affcted - and if suspending of backups one hour causes 196 you are too low on backup capacity.

[H_Sharma]

thanks Nicolai :)

Ok one more concern if backups are running and 9 O'clock Pm i stop backup schedular for restore operation

till 11 PM and in case i have some policy scheculed to run at around 10 PM. Would there be miss of these policy. Or would these run when i start the schedular after 11 Pm.

In other words what will happen to the policies that were in between 9 to 11 window when i would resume the schedular. Or i need to figure out and re-fire the backups of these missed policies?

[Marianne]

Ensure that backup window is open long enough. 
If backup window is open, the 10pm backups will be submitted as soon as scheduler is started again at 11pm.

Have you tried to just suspend running jobs so that restore can be started?
Once the restore is running, you can resume suspended jobs.
They will be queued and go active as soon as a drive is available.