How to restore expired images in Netbackup 7.1

[Oestec]

Hi All,

Attempting to restore a backup image, written to disk, that is past it's expiration date.

Using the import utility, however, (catalog\import\drive path defined) I do not see the image listed even though it does exist on the drive. In fact, there are several images that are over a year old that are on the same drive and the utility does not show any of them. All I'm seeing are images that have not yet expired.

Is there some way to force NBU to see these old images, perhaps using the command line?

Thanks for your help!

Chris.

[Marianne · Accepted solution]

Sorry, no way to import expired disk images.

Disk images are deleted from disk when they expire.

Hopefully you have duplicated disk images to tape with longer retention?

[Dyneshia]

Marianne is 100% correct.

[sksujeet]

I am afraid if the data on disk is expired there is nothing can be done to restore it. If this data is duplicated to tape and tape is not overwritten then we can try to import it from tape but we can't do it from disk.

Once the data on disk is expired it can't be recovered

[Oestec]

OK, just so I understand correctly, despite the fact that the image does still do exist, it cannot be read back in since NBU had determined it is past it's expiration? However, if the image was on tape then there would be a method to restore it?

[Will_Restore]

Disk is random media; tape is serial.  When disk image expires the blocks are marked free.  Any random block might have been written to since the image expiration, you don't know.  Try to import an image and it would likely be corrupt.

Tape does not exhibit this behaviour.  Tape images are appended until the media is full.  You won't have a random block somewhere in the middle of the tape being overwritten.

[Marianne]

OK, just so I understand correctly, despite the fact that the image does still do exist.....

No, image on disk no longer exists.

Expired images are physically deleted from disk. 

Apart from image expiration on the master server, nbdelete command gets executed on the media server to wipe expired images. 

Evidence can be seen in admin and bpdm logs on the media server (if the log folder exists).