Veritas-bu

[Veritas-bu] Backup Audit script...

2005-03-30 11:34:44
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Backup Audit script...
From: ewilts AT ewilts DOT org (Ed Wilts)
Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 10:34:44 -0600
On Wed, Mar 30, 2005 at 10:55:06AM -0500, Paul Keating wrote:
> Also, knowing what volumes and paths were selected, when the backup ran,
> and what it's end status was, doesn't gaurantee you've got the data on
> tape..... as I recently found out.

Yup.  My DBAs decided to gzip up their archive logs.  Unfortunately,
gzip sets the date of the gzip file to be the same as the date of the
first file.  They ran into really nice cases where they created the gzip
file in the past - before the most recent backup.  NetBackup nicely
skipped them.  It ran that way for several months until they needed to
restore...  They now use a different procedure.

> Looks now like I will have to implement something that runs on the
> client side, to determine the amount of data on EVERY machine, pass that
> to a central location, then compare to the amount of data netbackup
> captured, and provide an explanation for the differences!!

Now THAT is an ugly problem.  I hope you don't have any include/exclude
scripts or you'll have fun parsing those files too.  Don't forget to
handle the "cross mountpoints" situations on some policies and not
others...  I'm skeptical that you'll ever get this to a point that you
can trust it.  You might be better off generating a database of file
names instead of file sizes and the compare the result of your file name
listing with a bplist.  Files that are created or deleted between the
your run and NetBackup will throw the answer off of course.

-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts AT ewilts DOT org