Re: [Networker] 2.4TB File Server Restore
2011-09-19 12:18:14
On 2011-09-19 09:55, Chester Martin wrote:
Hello,
This past weekend I had to do a 2.4Tb windows cluster data restore from data
domain, it amounted to a little over 1 million files. It came from a full
(Tuesday) and two incrementals (Wednesday and Thursday) for the one restore.
I ran the restore from the command line because I "thought" that it wouldn't take as long for networker to
"select" the files that it had to restore. It took almost 5 hours for networker to "select" the
files that it had to restore. By select I mean that it shows the directories that it has to restore when you type in
the "add *" command.
Good thing is, while the files were being restored it actually showed the progress of
each file being restored from the command line. I know the gui does this but sometimes
when you're restoring a lot of small files the gui will "hang" and show nothing
but a white screen (gotta love the single threaded apps.. :)).
The odd thing that networker did was it restored the incremental from Wednesday first (I
could tell by the size of the saveset being restored). It also prompted for overwrite,
which is odd because I restored all the data to a new freshly formatted volume. After I
gave it a "Y" Wednesday's incremental completed then it started writing data
from Tuesday's full, then Thursday's incremental. The whole thing completed successfully
yesterday afternoon.
I have two questions from it though:
1) Could I have done a "save set" restore and the gotten around the
initial 5 hours it took to select the restorable data? That part was painful to wait
for..
A save set recover is often faster as it doesn't have to read the CFI.
Reading the CFI, particularly that many entries, is going to take a long
time. The problem with a save set recover, however, is that it restores
deleted files, and you'll need to tell it whether or not to overwrite.
With browsable recover it rebuilds the affected path the way it looked
as of that backup date/time so anything that was subsequently deleted
would not be restored. Also, with a save set recover you'd have to do
each piece, and you still might end up with a superset of the files. Any
time you have a huge recovery to do wherein the total amount of data
that's to be restored comes close to the total size of the full then I'd
be looking seriously at just doing a save set recover. It would depend,
of course, on your situation and how important it is to you to have an
exact rebuild.
2) I'm still unsure why I got an overwrite prompt when it restored all
the data to a new volume, is that normal?
If there was no prior identical named file/path(s) existing then I don't
see why it would have prompted you. It should only be doing that if it
encounters such a situation. As far as the order of the tapes is
concerned, I think NW **may** have changed the behavior at some point???
My experience was that it always started with the full and then worked
forward (in time), beginning with the next incremental and continuing
with every incremental after that up to and including the most recent
one that would contain the needed files. That was how it always worked,
but I noticed with a newer release that it will work backwards. I've
seen it wherein it starts with, say, the full and then applies the
incrementals in some different order. But in the end, I don't think it
matters. If it goes forward then it would overwrite similar named files
as it encounters subsequent (newer) versions. If it goes backward then
it would just not recover or not overwrite the previously recovered
version with the older one. It seems that going backwards would be more
efficient, but that's just a guess. I'd be curious to see what others
have to say about this.
How long after starting the recover did it prompt for overwrite? Was it
at the beginning or part way through?
George
Thanks in advance.
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--
George Sinclair
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