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quick question on DFSR failed file/s

manatee
Level 6

NBU 7.6.0.3

for DFSR backups of a drive, there are file/s being skipped due to access denied (file still open at user side). my question is, what happens to the other files that are not open or being used? will they have a backup inspite of the open file error caused by other opened files? or the whole DFSR backup is useless just coz a few files have open file error?

10 REPLIES 10

Will_Restore
Level 6

Files that are not active should be backed up just fine.  Try test restore to verify. 

Lowell_Palecek
Level 6
Employee

Messing with DFSR is like doing brain surgery on your file system replication. I would not restore DFSR from an incomplete backup even if NetBackup lets you try.

Disclaimer: I am not a DFSR expert. If no one gives you a more complete answer to your question than mine in a couple of days, I'll investigate further.

You could start by telling us which files are skipped and sharing a bit of the bpbkar log.

Marianne2
Level 4
Use BAR to browse. If you can see files/folders, you can restore.

sdo
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Certified
Not had a problem with restores of DFSR data. But a skipped locked file will not invalidate the rest of the backup. If it's status 0 or 1 then any non skipped:locked files should be restorable.
But heed the warning re DFSR being finicky... a mass restore will cause DFSR to get real busy.
FYI a NetBackup restore of data from a DFSR based backup does not restore DFSR meta/data, it only restores the files - so, restoring a few files you won't notice the impact on DFSR , but restore 15M files... files... well ... test it, and you'll wish your users had put so many files in there.
If there are any Solution Architects or Technical Architects out there reading this.. then take it from me... no more than 5M files in your DFSR designs please. I know MS says around 40M files max, but they don't have to backup and restore this stuff.

BTLOMS
Level 5

there is a problem that we had backing up DFSR. The actual files were being snapped and getting backed up, but the files showed they were being skipped. This is normal ( in our case ). Try looking to see if you can restore one of them, and if you can , then the file is being backed up. veritas support told us to add excludes , or ignore the errors.

The backups are not useless. i have been able to restore them.

watsons
Level 6

I don't know much about DFSR either, but I always thought you won't have "open file error" if your snapshot is working fine, then backup would use the snapshot. Did the snapshot process work, or was it set to "continue even if snapshot fails"? 

From this technote:

http://www.veritas.com/docs/000095710

It says replication is momentarily paused while the snapshot is being created, other than that what else could cause an "open file"?

.pst files are one problem

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc773238%28v=ws.10%29.aspx#BKMK_050

 

We've also seen issues with open .accdb or .xlsx files.  It's a limitation with DFS.  Netbackup can't fix that.

 

the files being skipped varies. sometimes .TMP or .XLS or .~xx (with xx being other letters). i know it's not much helpful but i'll try to get more. right now i have shadow writer error and need to restart the server. will check back later.

Definitely exclude *.tmp files, and ~$* if you have a lot of those.  

.xls files should not be excluded but users need to close such files before backup time so they are protected.  Again, this is DFS limitation and not a NetBackup problem.