On Sat, 26 Jan 2008, Bobby Williams wrote:

> We have warned, begged, pleaded, and threatened, but some application owners
> want to keep everything forever.
>
> I have a system with a file system with over 29 million files.  Of course no
> one can afford advanced client.  No one wants a raw partition backup because
> they may want that 1 file.   You have heard the excuses.
>
> Well, the storm hit.  I am moving a server to another data center and had to
> move the SAN volumes via tape.
>
> (Don't start telling me a better way of moving this stuff, that is not the
> point of this email and I have been suggesting ways for a while).
>
> I could not fire off a restore of the entire file system.  It would just
> stay in the queue.  I started seeing what I could fire off.  I started
> selecting some subdirectories and was able to restore.
>
> There were only 21,300 individual subdirectories, so clicking a few in the
> GUI was NOT an option.
>
> I did a bplist and got the subdir names.  Using split, I split the subdir
> names into groups of 50.  Gave me 425 file lists.
>
> I ran a script to brute force the restores.  Uh-oh.  1 tape with the data on
> it.  Not enough memory to calculate the restore list for 425 restore jobs
> concurrently.
>
> There is a "-w" switch on the bprestore command.  I now know what it is for.
> If you are scripting, it prevents the next restore from firing off until the
> previous restore is finished.  I had to go with it to keep everything from
> timing out in the queue and not knowing what had run and what had not.  I
> did include the "-L" to keep up with what had / had not fired.
>
> Data is going back and the restore will be successful.  Howerver, someone
> promised that the system would be online for testing 10 hours after it was
> installed.
>
> I had told them several times this week that the full backup took 35 hours,
> so don't expect a quick restore.
>
> Point of the email is that "yes, we can back up millions of files without
> paying for advanced client, but we can't restore the data per your RTO/SLA".
>
>
>
>
> Bobby Williams
> 2205 Peterson Drive
> Chattanooga, Tennessee  37421
> 423-296-8200
>
>

This should be part of an FAQ, good to know!

There is a "-w" switch on the bprestore command.  I now know what it is 
for. If you are scripting, it prevents the next restore from firing off 
until the previous restore is finished.
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