This almost exactly what I do for my DR
site so I don’t have to import tapes there ( as my DR site is a working
backup site not just a standby)
The only difference is that I put the
catalog image files in a different dir and then if I want to do a restore I
make a link from
/usr/openv/netbackup/db/images/prodservername
-> /prodserverimages/dir/prodsedrvername
Once I get the BAR going and find out what
tape I need I do have to ‘create’ the volume in that master ( and
again I so put them in a protected volume pool – one that no policies
use)
From:
veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Dean
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 2009
6:05 PM
To:
veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Any thoughts
on this "hack" to avoid import?
Hello veritas-bu'ers.
I'm interested to hear if any of you experts have any thoughts on my current
scenario.
We have recently moved on from a NBU 5.1 on HPUX environment to NBU 6.5 on
Linux (with a different master server name). Mainly because of urgent requirements
at the time, I just created a new master server, installed NBU 6.5 from
scratch, and didn't bother about integrating the NBU 5.1 catalog.
Now the HP server has been decommissioned, and it's time to do something about
the long term (7 year retention) backups.
Last week, I started Phase 2 import on a spangroup (connected set of tapes) of
Lotus Notes backups. I left it running over the weekend. It ran for 3 days, and
only got through 3 of the 1,000 or so tapes I have to import. At that rate, it's
going to take over 3 years to get all the imports done. Aside from the constant
monitoring, that basically means one expensive (IBM 3592) tape drive in use
constantly for 3 years, and a constant drain on our cross-site fibre bandwidth.
However, I seem to have found a "hack" that allows me to restore from
these old backups, without having to import the tapes.
I have found that you can copy the catalog entries from the old catalog to the
new one, then edit the *FULL index files, replacing the old master server/media
server name on the FRAGMENT records with the new master server name, and the
backup image appears completely normal in the new system, with all the right
attributes, including expiry date, and can be restored from.
I wrote a small script to automate the catalog file modifications, and managed
to get these 7 years worth of backups cataloged in the new NBU server, in about
20 minutes, as opposed to 3 years of importing. I tested several restores, and
it all works perfectly.
The only issue seems to be that that NBU doesn't know much about the actual
tape. I have all the old tapes in a seperate volume pool called
"imported", which no policies can (should) EVER write to. (feature
request for Symantec? - read only volume pools). When I do a bpmedialist on one
of these tapes, NBU/EMM thinks it's unassigned. I have a list of when all these
tapes are due to expire on the old system, and my current plan is just to check
this list periodically and move them from the "imported" pool to the
scratch pool when they are due (I'll probably script this bit aswell).
It all makes perfect sense to me.
I guess this post serves two purposes:
1: To see if any seasoned experts see any problems with this approach.
2: To catalog this "hack" on this mailing list, for posterity :)
Cheers!
Dean