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2 Posts
0
3028
October 2nd, 2011 11:00
How To Restore Longer Than 24 Hours and Permissions Question
Hello -
We have an avamar grid in site A, backing up servers in site B, separated by a 4mb/s WAN.
I had a server with 285G in site B die 9/28 during a backup (we backup over the WAN). I stood up a new server in site B, and restored from a non-avamar local backup of files from 9/6. No permissions were carried over from these files. A restore from 9/27 (last complete backup) is in progress, however it will take longer than 24 hours due to the slow WAN. We are using avamar 5, and this is a windows 2008 server.
My current plan is to:
1. restore all 9/27 then the partial 9/28 backup to a server local to the backups (site A). This is done, and the restore was fast.
2. save the permissions from the site A server to a text file using icacls /save
3. restore all 9/27 then the partial 9/28 backup to the new server in site B - taking a long time!
4. restore the permissions to the new server in site B from the icacls permissions file
5. If the icacls permissions save/restore does not work, use robocopy to copy over permissions
Questions:
1. How can I allow a restore to run longer than 24 hours? I have disabled maintenance tasks, but do not think that is the answer.
2. Can I use avamar to restore only permissions?
3. What is the best way to restore given these conditions?
Any and all advice is welcome!
Thanks,
Scott
Mark_Bellows
240 Posts
0
October 4th, 2011 18:00
Questions:
1. How can I allow a restore to run longer than 24 hours? I have disabled maintenance tasks, but do not think that is the answer.
The one thing that shuts down backups and restores is the black out window at the beginning of the maintenece window. If you have disabled the maintenance tasks, you should be good from that stand point.
2. Can I use avamar to restore only permissions?
The resolution to restoring the ACLs is to re-run the restore operation on a set of folders and/or files with the "—-restore-acls-only" flag. In order to accomplish this:
a) Launch the restore operation from the Backup and Restore view in the Avamar Administrator.
b) Click on More Options… in the lower left corner.
c) Click on More.
d) Enter restore-acls-only (without the quotes) in the Enter Attribute field.
e) Click on the plus icon.
f) Click OK twice to start the restore.
The should do it. You need to have Avamar 5.0.2 or new to use this option. You CAN use it with 5.0.1, but you might have errors.
3. What is the best way to restore given these conditions?
Restore the full first and make sure it has settled, the restore the incrimental with the overwrite enabled. That is the process I have used and it has always worked best for me.
As always, when trying a new process, test it on dev server to make sure it works the way you expect.
That should do it! Good luck!
Mark
bcouhbor
59 Posts
1
October 4th, 2011 14:00
Hi Scott,
1. I didn't think a restore actually cancels after 24 hours? I may be wrong, but i've ran a restore over a 48 period before with no issues. The maintance tasks should not affect a restore, only a backup. No writes are to occur to the grid while the garbage collection runs (blackout window), but there should be no issues with reads.
2. I haven't seen the option to do so. There may be an attribute you can use to perform the operation, but you probably need to get that info off EMC support.
3. Without AVE (avamar virtual edition) onsite, your business will have to accept a longer RTO. If you deploy an AVE instance, you can backup locally to the virtual avamar node onsite, then replicate back to your primary grid offsite, meaning if a server dies, you can restore from the local virtual avamar instance. Without it, you have a few options...
- Restore over the WAN, which is what you're doing now.
- Restore to a VM located at the site of your grid, and have users at site B access it remotely, while you work on rebuilding/restoring the original server
- Restore to a USB drive, and send that up, plug that into the server, and copy it all over.
Let me know if you have any other questions, or need any further clarification. Also, let us know how you go! Good luck!
ScottMeilicke
2 Posts
0
October 5th, 2011 09:00
Thanks Mark and Babak.
What I ended up doing was restoring all data to a server in site A, and giving users read-only access to that server. Then since I had a local backup that was about three weeks old in site B, first restored from that, then used Avamar to restore most of the data to the remote server. Finally, because I did need to stop maintenance tasks, and the restore was going to take days if not weeks, I am finishing up with robocopy. Robocopy restore permissions, so I am happy with this.
Going forward, since we do not have a virtual appliance at this remote site, I am using vDR from vmware to have local DR backups, and will continue with remote Avamar backup for retention.
Testing with a dev box was key to my understanding of how everything works, since I find the descriptions of the restore options in the avamar windows guide a little lacking. Finally, we are on 5.0.1, so no ACL restores. Avamar support was helpful, and supplied the bits for me to do that if I wanted to go down that road.
Thanks,
Scott