Restoring Netbackup NDMP tapes on Windows Server - Gurus needed

[bitmover]

Hello Netbackup Gurus,

I've been tasked with restoring several Netbackup tapes of Netapp data that were backed up using NDMP.

The tape drives we are using are LTO-4.

The original server is not available any longer, so getting any catalog tapes or anything else will not be possible.

We are in a Windows 2003 / Netbackup 6.5 environment.

I need to restore all data from these tapes to folders on the local Windows machine.

Security/Permissions don't need to be retained.



We are not natively a Netbackup shop, so just getting these tapes cataloged/imported is a challenge at this stage.

I am on a tight schedule and am therefore willing to make it worth the time for anyone who is confident that they can assist me with this task. ($$ via Paypal to the first few people who respond with a solution that works.)


I imagine it is probably relatively straightforward, but I don't have a lot of time to figure it out so I need someone with a lot of knowledge in this area.



Are there any Netbackup Gurus out there that can help? I am looking for an answer on this ASAP. Please PM me if this sounds like your area of expertise.

Thank you,

Bitmover

[Nicolai · Accepted solution]

I assume that the tape drive was attached to the netapp box (not using 3 way NDMP backup)

I asked support some month ago if I could restore data from a NDMP (emc clerra) backup  to a Windows client, and the answer was "no, must be same architecture". I think you will need a box caple of "talking" NDMP.


Regards

Nicolai

[sunguy527]

bitmover,

As Nicolai said...... NetBackup NDMP backups can only be restored to an NDMP host. You have to have an NDMP capable filer (NetApp, EMC, etc) to restore the data to. You can't just dump an NDMP backup to host (windows, unix, etc...). NDMP to NDMP only..... then map the filer to your host to see the data.

[scorpy_582]

NDMP is a little more specific.. You cannot restore NDMP backup from netApp filer to an EMC filer.

Every vendor have their own proprietory way of writing NDMP data to tapes.

However, if these tapes were written Using NBU, then you should be able to import the media in netbackup but there wouldn't be much of use unless you have the filer with original make available.

[Darren_Dunham]

As mentioned, any vendor can format NDMP data however they want.  So Netbackup can't offer to restore it directly.  It can only send the stream back to the host and let the host deal with it.

I have two possible suggestions (assuming you can't get a real netapp).

#1  Find someone with a Netapp contract that has access to the netapp simulator.  If you had the simulator, you might be able to enable NDMP and get it to restore the data.

#2 Netapp uses a format that is very similar to 'ufsdump' used by Solaris machines.  There are some guides for doing the restore on a Solaris machine.  You can download Solaris for free.  (You can even run it under VMware, but getting the image into a VMware host seems tricky to me).    See this post:

www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/ndmp-restore-solaris-machine

--
Darren

[bitmover]

Thanks to everyone for the input on this issue. I figured that we would probably need to restore this natively, but, I have been looking into the Solaris/VMware option as well recently.

The Netapp simulator is an interesting option. I haven't heard of that before.

The trick to doing this with Solaris would be getting the VM to recognize the tape drive (Does VMWare workstation allow SCSI passthrough? Or only the ESX/GSX server?), or running through the process using a RAW image file. I suppose if the image file was on a share, it *may* be possible to access/mount that from the Solaris VMware, and then run the process. These image files are >200GB, so accessing them over a network would be optimal over trying to get them "inside" a vmware disk/container.

However, some of the instructions in that link require the ability to space past the header, and to specific file marks, and I don't know how to do that from a mounted tape image file.

Anyone know if that is possible? (to mount a raw tape image file and run these commands?)

thanks,

Bitmover

[Darren_Dunham]

That depends on how the tape image is rendered.  I don't know exactly what is meant by a "mounted tape image file".  How would the tape image be taken?

You can do 'mt' commands on windows (might need cygwin installed).  Then you can use mt to get to the right spot on the tape.  From there, you could read the tape ('dd' maybe), and pipe the data stream over to Solaris ('ssh' maybe), and then have 'ufsrestore' read the stream.

So something like:
cygwin% mt commands....
cygwin% dd if=/dev/tape | ssh solaris "ufsrestore tf -"

If everything is working, you'll get a listing of files on the image.

--
Darren

[bitmover]

These images are RAW, the equivelant of "DD" images. My thought is that they could be mounted as a "virtual tape" so that Solaris would think that it was a tape drive and standard commands could be run against it.

I haven't tried Cygwin, but that sounds like an interesting idea. I'll try a few things and see what happens...

[Yasuhisa_Ishika]

You can get it from NOW if you have valid account of NOW.
http://now.netapp.com/

As mentioned formerly, NDMP data is recorded with its own format. By NetApp doc, it might be "standard BSD dump format", but I'm not sure.
Try importing tapes on media server and restore data to NetApp(or simulator) with Remote-NDMP config.