System Recovery 20xx and an Off Site Location

[W_Harrison]

Hi All,

As you know, when working with Off Site Locations (for example a 2nd UNC path) with System Recovery, when a backup completes SR will make sure all your backup data from your primary backup location is copied to the Off Site secondary location. I've also noticed that, if you have 3 base images + incrementals, if any file from any base image isnt present on the off site location then it gets re-copied from the primary. Thus keeping both the primary and secondary in sync. No issue there.

My question being, what happens if there are images on the secondary that are not on the primary location? (Due to failure of the primary)

Does SR

1. copy BACK any missing images to re-populate the primary, not loosing any data and resync both locations,
2. will it REMOVE the files on the secondary due to them not being on the primary,
3. do nothing with the images on the secondary which effectivly will orphan them for manual removal,
4. somthing else?

Luckily we have not delt with this as a scenario yet and I didnt want to 'test' with a live site so currently the OffSite Secondary location is turned off so SR cannot get to it.

Thanks all

Wayne.

[criley]

Hi Wayne,

I'm fairly sure that SSR wont copy back any missing recovery point files from the offsite location to the primary location (I would have to test this to be 100% sure though).

I'm curious to understand what type of scenario you are running into that means the primary location is missing some files. Could you explain please?

[W_Harrison]

Hi Chris,

In this case - quite simply the NAS box being used for the primary location died - RAID set in it would not mount. I put a new NAS box in, configured to the same name/ IP address as the original and let SR run new base images from each server. Paths on it were set up identically to the original so it was just a drop in and go replacement.

SR complains that there are 'images not in their location' but thats to be expected.

Cheers

Wayne.

[criley]

This is being looked into.... will get back to you once I have confirmation of how this should work.

[criley]

Wayne,

I've tested this myself and can confirm that the recovery points on the offsite location will remain after replacing the primary location - even when those recovery points are no longer stored on the primary.

However, there will be no automatic copy back from the offsite to the primary location.

Hope this helps.

[W_Harrison]

Hi Chris,

Thats good to know - at least I dont have to worry about bringing the offsite location back on and looseing the archive backups. The one thing to be mindfull of though is that the offsite will have ophaned data on there at some point which will need to be managed / deleted off.

I think I'm going to let this week complete and look at bringing it back on next monday to start syncing new data.

Looks like there is a possible 'feature request' in here somewhere :)

Thanks

Wayne.