Restoring Off-Site Tapes on DR (remote) site

[Angelina]

Hi All,

I contacted Symantec support with no progress for a weeek :( even having platinum support for: netbakup Enterprise Server (2x) and Vaulting !!!

I am trying to restore off-site tapes on DR site without importing images due to huge amount data on tapes.
We are runing Netbackup 6.0MP4 (SPARC Solaris 10) on both, primary and DR, sites.

My primary site: Server A
DR (remote site) Server B

Library on primary site has 8 LTO3 and 8 VTL tape drives.
Library on DR site 2 LTO3 and 8 VTL tape drives.

I do not want to recover catalog with all storage, media and policies configuration from primary site at DR site.

I want to import catalog backup images only for certain clients or certain policies from primary site and restore at DR site.

Master/media server and library at DR site will backup servers on DR site as well.

Questions:
Q1. Can I have different name for master and media server on DR site or it must be the same name as master/media server on primary site?

Q2. Whatever is the answer is for Q1. is it possible restore catalog from primary site without restoring ALL policies, volumes and storage configuration from primary site?

In summary, at DR site, I want to use catalog (moved with off site tapes) to restore backups for certain clients without importing images from the tapes (it takes a lot of time:(

Thank you in advance,
Angelina

[Stumpr2]

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Angelina wrote:
Hi All,

I contacted Symantec support with no progress for a weeek :( even having platinum support for: netbakup Enterprise Server (2x) and Vaulting !!!

Angelina

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This is not acceptable. If you get this type of support again then please have your call requeued to another support person. Also tell your sale agent about this experience and ask for a contact to be able to call if you have service related problems.

[MattS]

Bump-

Interested in an answer for Q1 and 2.

[Stumpr2]

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Angelina wrote:
Hi All,

Questions:
Q1. Can I have different name for master and media server on DR site or it must be the same name as master/media server on primary site?

Thank you in advance,
Angelina

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The master server and media servers can be different names at he DR.

[Rakesh_Khandelw]

Apologize for the delay from Technical Support.

If you want to recover only portion of catalog like images only, you can keep different names on DR sites and yes with 6.0 onwards you can restore selected images only from your catalog backup. You may have to import the catalog backup though unless you are copying the image  DB from primary site to DR. Once NetBackup at DR site knows what's on the tape you can go to BAR GUI and select appropriate parameters server name, client name etc and for policy type select "NBU-catalog".

At this time you should be able to restore the selected images as long as the tape contains data was imported properly or NetBackup was made aware of the existense of  required backup images.

[Angelina]

Hi all.

Thank you all the comments and I agree with your comments about "quality" of support.

Rakesh, can I ask support to reroute my case to you please since I am really not getting support from the currently assigned support engineer?

Rakesh, I tried to partialy import catalog from primary site from NetBackup GUI then I got the message that I must specify location of "dr file" which is on catalog tape!

Then I did,
 bptm -makedbentry -m EBP092 -den hcart3 -poolnum 4
as well as I did for all moved in tapes.

After that I can see that my tapes including catalog tape EBP092 is assigned with DR media server
(nbemmcmd -listmedia -mediaid EBP092)

Then I tried from " VERITAS NetBackup (tm) 6.0 Troubleshooting Guide for UNIX and Windows" page 580 to run commad "bpimport -create_db_info  -id EBP092",  media EBP092 has full online catalog backup from primary site then I get:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Import phase 1 started Sat Mar 29 2008 09:36:21
INF - Create DB information for media id EBP092.
INF - Initiation of bptm process to phase 1 import media id EBP092 was successful.
INF - Status = cannot perform specified media import operation.
------------------------------------------------------------------

As you wrote, the problem is "Once NetBackup at DR site knows what's on the tape"

Rakesh, could you please email me procedure how to import backed up images from catalog since for a week I am not able to do with/without symantec support.

I am under tremedous management pressure to document off site tape restoratation procedure on DR site.
Auditors want to prove that we can restore off site tapes in the case the primarys site is down.

Thank you in advance,
Angelina

[Angelina]

Rakesh,

I tried also method to copy images of the clients that I want to restore from primary to DR site
/opt/openv/netbackup/db/client1
/opt/openv/netbackup/db/client2

but when I tried to restore on DR site, the rstore could not find tape where images are though the tapes were in the libary!

Once more, the netbackup did not know "what's on the tape" ....


Regards,
Angelina

[Angelina]

Hi,

I fond at least one working solution:
PRIMARY-SERVER= netbackup master/media server
DR-SERVER= DR (remote) netbackup master/media server

Step 1. Stop netbackup server on DR site.
Moved /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images to /usr/openv/netbackup/db/images-old

Step 2.
I transfered directory /opt/openv/netbackup/db/images/PRIMARY-SERVER to
DR site netbackup server on same directory.

Step 3.

Started netbackup server on DR site.

Step 4.
On DR site, netbackup server, GUI, BAR I choose
Server used for backups and restores: DR-SERVER
Source client for restore: PRIMARY-SERVER
Destination Client for restore: DR-SERVER
Policy Type for Restore: NBU Catalog

and I restored images from /opt/openv/netbackup/db/images/client1 and client2

After that I was able to restore files for client1 and client2 us usual :)
So, this step is required for restore deamon to "learn where is what".

Since I used /opt/openv/netbackup/db/images/PRIMARY-SERVER to partialy restore backed up only wanted client images from catalog, and tomorrow I will repeat the steps to be quite sure this is proper way, my question is,
is it possible to partialy recover catalog only image files for certain clients based having only catalog on tape and dr file?

Regards,
Angelina