twomey_paul
asked on
Arcserve 11.5 / 12 Restore from Tape to Disk to Disk (staging)
Hi,
We're using Arcserve 11.5 to do disk staged backups to Tape.
The backup hardware is a Dell 1950 with MD1000 3Tb disk system with a TL2000 LTO3 single drive library.
Arscerve 11.5 is running sp3.
The Backup job is a 60 server network backup job to a disk staging area, with an immediate migration to Tape when the staging job is complete.
This method works well for us as we can back up over 2Tb of data from over 60 servers (Files, SQL, Exchange, Informix ect), in about 8 hours.
The problem is restores.
We have conducted a few DR restore tests and our DR company can't find a method of restoring our tapes to the disk staging area then restore the individual servers in parallel. We are currently restoring our servers in serial from tape which is taking forever and a day.
Does anyone know how to do this in Arcserve 11.5 and / or if Arcserve 12 has this functionality?
Thanks in advance!
Paul
We're using Arcserve 11.5 to do disk staged backups to Tape.
The backup hardware is a Dell 1950 with MD1000 3Tb disk system with a TL2000 LTO3 single drive library.
Arscerve 11.5 is running sp3.
The Backup job is a 60 server network backup job to a disk staging area, with an immediate migration to Tape when the staging job is complete.
This method works well for us as we can back up over 2Tb of data from over 60 servers (Files, SQL, Exchange, Informix ect), in about 8 hours.
The problem is restores.
We have conducted a few DR restore tests and our DR company can't find a method of restoring our tapes to the disk staging area then restore the individual servers in parallel. We are currently restoring our servers in serial from tape which is taking forever and a day.
Does anyone know how to do this in Arcserve 11.5 and / or if Arcserve 12 has this functionality?
Thanks in advance!
Paul
ASKER
Thanks bhanu.
Yes we want to restore from tape to disk then restore from disk to servers.
I understand that the functionality isn't available in 11.5 or 12.
We understand that we could add more tape drives, but before we do that I just wanted to confirm we couldn't multixplex the restores.
Surely there's a way of backing up the disk staging area's "files" to tape, then restore them, merge them in to the database then restore from disk?? Do you know if this is possible?
This seems like something so fundamental that CA have left out of Arcserve!
Thanks for your help, Paul.
Yes we want to restore from tape to disk then restore from disk to servers.
I understand that the functionality isn't available in 11.5 or 12.
We understand that we could add more tape drives, but before we do that I just wanted to confirm we couldn't multixplex the restores.
Surely there's a way of backing up the disk staging area's "files" to tape, then restore them, merge them in to the database then restore from disk?? Do you know if this is possible?
This seems like something so fundamental that CA have left out of Arcserve!
Thanks for your help, Paul.
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ASKER
Ok thanks for info.
Dwelling on "The other way of interpretation is " can i copy the data on my Staging disk to another disk and keep that handy for restores" yes you can do that.", how can we do this to tape? Arcserve doesn't allow us to backup the staging area specifically in a normal 'non-staging' job.
If it is possible (please tell!), then would we need to backup the database aswell or can we merge the restored staging area in to the database?
Thanks again for your help!
Dwelling on "The other way of interpretation is " can i copy the data on my Staging disk to another disk and keep that handy for restores" yes you can do that.", how can we do this to tape? Arcserve doesn't allow us to backup the staging area specifically in a normal 'non-staging' job.
If it is possible (please tell!), then would we need to backup the database aswell or can we merge the restored staging area in to the database?
Thanks again for your help!
Hi,
When you asked me about copying the data on the staging disk it was on the terms of a windows copy. Otherwise the data is as it is copied to the tapes. So why would you like to duplicate the data on to the tapes and increase the,
size of your total backup when you are backing up around 2 TB.
As far as the database is concerned if you are using SQL as the backend databse for arcserve then you increase the retention period of information in the database by going to server admin and changing the database pruning settings.
If you are using the native database that is shipped along with arcserve then it is not advisable to retain the data for more than 10 to 15 days taking into the amount of data that you are backing up, as the native database is a flat file database and it tends get corrupted which large amount of data retained.
If you are using SQL for arcserve you can use the SQL agent to backup the database of the SQL server which will have the backup information and you can restore this database to alternate SQL server so that you dont overwrite the existing one and run bconfig.exe in the arcserve home folder to change the database server.
bhanu
When you asked me about copying the data on the staging disk it was on the terms of a windows copy. Otherwise the data is as it is copied to the tapes. So why would you like to duplicate the data on to the tapes and increase the,
size of your total backup when you are backing up around 2 TB.
As far as the database is concerned if you are using SQL as the backend databse for arcserve then you increase the retention period of information in the database by going to server admin and changing the database pruning settings.
If you are using the native database that is shipped along with arcserve then it is not advisable to retain the data for more than 10 to 15 days taking into the amount of data that you are backing up, as the native database is a flat file database and it tends get corrupted which large amount of data retained.
If you are using SQL for arcserve you can use the SQL agent to backup the database of the SQL server which will have the backup information and you can restore this database to alternate SQL server so that you dont overwrite the existing one and run bconfig.exe in the arcserve home folder to change the database server.
bhanu
ASKER
The tapecopy pointed me in the right direction. I was able to tapecopy migrated tapes jobs back to the staging area and restore multiple jobs similtaneously.
Thanks for the help!
Thanks for the help!
I would need additional clarification if this explination of mine is not relevant.
My understanding is that you want the restore to be sent to the staging location before they are restored to the original server and they should be automatically run to the respective server. I.e. you want to stage you restores.
This functionality is something that has been not included in neither 11.5 or r12.
There is a smart restore option where normall the restore trys to check the staging area before restoring the data from the tape, it tries to pull the data from tape instead of the Disk system if that data has been purged/deleted after the data migrating to tape.
does this answer your query.
Additionally i wanted to comment on this line of yours "We have conducted a few DR restore tests and our DR company can't find a method of restoring our tapes to the disk staging area then restore the individual servers in parallel"
When you have multiple tape drives on the TL, arcserve can simultaneously restore data to multiple server parallely from multiple tapes
post back if you need any more clarification
bhanu