Networker

Re: [Networker] NSR 7.4.5 Entire Catalog dump to text file...????

2012-01-18 19:01:59
Subject: Re: [Networker] NSR 7.4.5 Entire Catalog dump to text file...????
From: Tim Mooney <Tim.Mooney AT NDSU DOT EDU>
To: NETWORKER AT LISTSERV.TEMPLE DOT EDU
Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:00:22 -0600
In regard to: [Networker] NSR 7.4.5 Entire Catalog dump to text...:

Please allow me to paint a better picture here:

Customer Fuzzy has several Legator masters backing up several clients.
Customer Fuzzy decides that it's time to downsize and retire 8 clients from one 
master server, Master-B and also retire Master-B.
Due to a requirement of law for a 7 year retention,
Customer Fuzzy has to have a way to recover one of the archived files from 
historical backup if/when requested, until the data expires.
Customer Fuzzy has Master-A that they want to use to recover any old archive 
data from Master-B if/when the need ever arises.
We just need a way for them to find the file(s) they want to recover (if/when 
it ever comes up) and have a process to go through in order to restore said 
archived data to Master-A so they can play with their data from 7 years ago.

Make more sense now? I hope so.  :D

It does.

Be advised that moving volumes (and clients, to a much smaller extent)
between NetWorker servers gets tricky.  Because Master-B won't know
anything about the tape volume(s) from Master-A, you are correct that
you'll need to use scanner.  I think there's a chance, at least in theory,
that you could have a volid clash when you do that scanner.  I think the
chance is pretty remote, but it's something to be aware of.

The same chance exists for clientid, but it's even more remote.

If I were in your situation, I would pursue one of the following options:

1) is it an option to keep master B around, even if it's turned off?  The
NetWorker license allows you to do recoveries in perpetuity, so you could
essentially quit paying for the licenses for Master-B, and although you
would not be able to do any backups with it, you could do recoveries down
the road.

I'm guessing that's not an option, but I thought I would at least mention
it.

2) *Don't* wait until you need to do a recovery to see if you're going to
be able to use scanner to rebuild the media and client file index!  If
nothing else, run "scanner -m" on the tapes *now* (you may need to create
the volume pool, if Master A has different pools than Master B).  scanner
-m only populates the media database, which takes very little space.

If you're talking about more than a couple dozen tapes, this probably
isn't an option either, but if you can do it now, you're increasing your
chances of success down the road.  Let's face it, recovery time is not
the time when you want to run into problems or have processes take longer
than they need to.

If you have the disk space on Master A, you could even recreate the
clients now (using the same client id that they have on Master B).  If
memory serves, clients don't actually take up a license until after their
first backup, so if you create them but don't add them to any active group
and don't ever run a backup for them, you can have the client defined and
ready to go, but essentially inactive.  You'll want to test that, but I
believe that's the way the licensing works.

Tim
--
Tim Mooney                                             Tim.Mooney AT ndsu DOT 
edu
Enterprise Computing & Infrastructure                  701-231-1076 (Voice)
Room 242-J6, IACC Building                             701-231-8541 (Fax)
North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105-5164

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