Veritas-bu

Re: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions

2010-04-08 13:54:32
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions
From: "Jonathan Dyck" <jdyck AT bank-banque-canada DOT ca>
To: "Nardello, John" <john.nardello AT cgi DOT com>
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 13:53:56 -0400

Exactly,  did the \\.\E: backup, results in a failure (status code 1), but it chugs through all the contents OK until the end.  Here’s some info for those interested...

 

dd for Windows seems to have the same issue,  it chugs through, creating an image of the unpartitioned drive, but then spits out an error at the end “Error reading file: 87 the parameter is incorrect”.

 

dd.exe if=\\.\z: of=f:\my_backup.img bs=1M  

 

But, it reports the same number of records in and out, and leaves behind the disk image on disk,  which is promising.   So to “test” a recovery, I format the drive (Z:\ in this case), write some dummy data onto it, and then attempt the recovery:

 

dd.exe if=f:\my_backup.img of=\\.\z: bs=1M

 

Which progresses for an appropriate amount of time (similar to the backup process), and doesn’t spit out error at the end, and my drive shows up as unpartitioned again.  It also reports the same number of records in and out as the backup, so I’m optimistic it “works”.  I think I’m going to actually go ahead and test this when the techs show up to install it.

 

So yes,  this is all on external SAN storage, so my backup plan will be to replicate the primary volume across to my other site, and take daily snapshots of that replicated LUN.  Not my favourite thing to do,  but will do the trick and probably satisfy my business unit.

 

Cheers.

 

 

From: Nardello, John [mailto:john.nardello AT cgi DOT com]
Sent: April 8, 2010 1:18 PM
To: Jonathan Dyck
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN DOT EDU
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions

 

Quick check, you said you tried backing this up already - do you mean as a raw partition ? i.e. File list looked something like:

     \\.\E:

 

If that's not working for you then I agree with Jeff, the best you could hope for would be removing the single point of failure by using a clone of some kind.

If that does work.....then you'll need to quiescence that volume somehow (backup mode, shutdown the app, whatever) before the backup, or go with a clone of the LUN and then back up the clone as a raw partition.

 

Just make sure to test restores before you sign off on the final version. =)

 

- John Nardello

 

 


From: Lightner, Jeff [mailto:jlightner AT water DOT com]
Sent: Thu 4/8/2010 9:59 AM
To: Jonathan Dyck; Nardello, John
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN DOT EDU
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions

With the sticking accelerator issue a Corolla might go as fast as a Ferrari eventually.  ;-)

Of course you haven't said what your disk storage is - mentioning LUN makes me think it is an external storage array.  Some of those have ways to copy data between arrays so if you have more than one array of the same manufacture you might look into that as a possibility.  Doesn't get it offsite but does get rid of the single point of failure.

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Dyck
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 12:16 PM
To: Nardello, John
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN DOT EDU
Subject: Re: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions

Absolutely.  They wanted to sell us a 15-20k piece of add-on software that archives data from the unformatted into "normally" readable content on another LUN.  We're trying to figure out if we can avoid that, as we don't have any archival requirements for this data, so it'd be one of those "buying a Ferrari when you need Corolla" kind of deals.



-----Original Message-----
From: Nardello, John [mailto:john.nardello AT cgi DOT com]
Sent: April 8, 2010 11:49 AM
To: Jonathan Dyck
Cc: VERITAS-BU AT MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN DOT EDU
Subject: RE: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions

Just to ask the obvious question - how does the vendor expect you to perform backups of their proprietary system ? Do they have any recommendations that might help ?

- John Nardello
"Your backups are only as good as your restores."


-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu [mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Jonathan Dyck
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2010 6:20 AM
To: VERITAS-BU AT MAILMAN.ENG.AUBURN DOT EDU
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Backing up unformatted primary partitions

Hi all,
I have the pleasure of trying to protect data for a system that writes (obviously in a proprietary manner) data to an unformatted partition in Windows.  I've read the guides,  and see that it's unsupported by NBU (I tried anyways,  it teases you by actually backing up the blocks, then fails with a status code 1).

Just curious,  has anyone out there tried to do this without the use of hardware snapshots (which I think I'll have to fall back on)?

Cheers,
Jon

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