Restore of Cumulative Incremental Backup Hangs

[Robert_Young]

I posted a query 2 months ago regarding issues restoring data from flashbackup cumulative incremental backups. I am still having serious problems restoring data from these backups, I have logged a call with Veritas support but as yet no resolution.

Does anyone have any advice for configuring cumulative incremental backups or best practice for performing restores as the documentation is very limited?

Our scheduled policy runs a full flashbackup once per week followed by cumulative incremental backups. The policies contains 3 - 4 separate drives per policy (e.g. x: y: and z:). I am able to restore data from the first drive in the list every time but attempts to restore data from subsequent drives fail (the restore just hangs). Maximum logging provides no further information regarding the problem.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated. As you can imagine this is becoming a very serious problem that I urgently need to resolve.

Thanks in advance. Rob.

[AKopel]

What version of NBU are you running? Do you have the latest MP? Are you using VSS or VSP for your flashbackups? What OS and SP is your client?

[Robert_Young]

I am running NetBackup 5.1 MP4 on Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition non SP1. How do I tell if I'm using VSS or VSP for the flashbackup? I have also tried this on a test system running NetBackup 6.0 SP2 and I get exactly the same behavoir.

Regards, Rob.

[AKopel]

By default you will be using VSP.
I would recommend using VSS for W2K3 clients (but I would also recommend upgrading to SP1 as there are problems with VSS with non-SP1)

Then you go into the Master Server Host properties, go to Clients, and add the client you want to use VSS. Choose windows open file backup and choose to use VSS. (I don't have the console in front of me at the moment, but I think that should get you there)

[AKopel]

By default you will be using VSP.
I would recommend using VSS for W2K3 clients (but I would also recommend upgrading to SP1 as there are problems with VSS with non-SP1)

Then you go into the Master Server Host properties, go to Clients, and add the client you want to use VSS. Choose windows open file backup and choose to use VSS. (I don't have the console in front of me at the moment, but I think that should get you there)

[AKopel]

By default you will be using VSP.
I would recommend using VSS for W2K3 clients (but I would also recommend upgrading to SP1 as there are problems with VSS with non-SP1)

Then you go into the Master Server Host properties, go to Clients, and add the client you want to use VSS. Choose windows open file backup and choose to use VSS. (I don't have the console in front of me at the moment, but I think that should get you there)

[Robert_Young]

I now have a work-around to this issue to guarantee the ability to restore data from multiple disk drives backed up in the same policy. The setting I have changed is to select the "Allow multiple data streams" in each Policy. This has allowed me to perform successful restores from each disk drive now. However the original issue still remains unresolved. This is still being investigated by Veritas.

Therefore I would urge anyone who has Cumulative Incremental FlashBackups configured in this manner to put into effect the setting I describe above to avoid potential data restore problems.

I will post any further updates as I receive them.

Rob.

[Lance_Hoskins]

So the workaround is to use Multiple Data Streams or to shut it off (just so that I'm understanding your previous post correctly)?

[Robert_Young]

The work-around is to USE the "Multiple data streams" setting in the policy configuration. To set this check the tick box in the "Change policy" dialogue box.

[Robert_Young]

This has now been confirmed as a bug by Veritas. The work-around is to set the "allow multiple data streams" setting in the policy configuration.