Help! Disaster Recovery woun't recognise my Tape!

[znapper]

Hi, please, if you have any tip here, just respond, even if you think it might be less relevant, I need all input here it seemes.

So i'm sitting here with this problem right, our Exchange server has crashed and I'm on my 3'rd day trying to recover it from my backup tapes, with no luck so far...

The server I'm trying to recover is a a windows advanced 2000 server (sp3) with exchange 2000.
I've run regular full backups of the system for over 1 year on a regular basis and gotten some so-called "incomplete" backups because of some locked files here and there, but the backups have still been flagged as successfull. Also, from checking the logs, I know that several Gigabytes has been written to the tapes during these two years so..

Then the tapes should contain some data atleast, right?
(I've been unable to try out a restore due to the lack of spare servers at my workplace, so typically when this crash happened 3 days ago, I was basically thrown into it )

Now, after some reseach I've found out that I can burn a bootable CD-rom and create some hardware machine spesific disk.
I reformatted and installed win2k server (not advanced) on the same partition as the old windows 2000 advanced server used to be on, patched it to sp2 and then installed arcserve2000 with disaster revocery option, patched it to sp4 and made the cd and disks).

So, the CD boots fine, windows setup starts, it asks if i want to specify additional devices, yes..i press F6.
The harddrives (and the tape drive) are indeed in a a RAID system so I insert the disk with the proper RAID drivers when asked, everything seemes ok so far.
Install on the same partition as win2k, seemes to be working, installing.....reboot...
After reboot the disaster recovery screen appares and the computer is working a bit, then installs a cd-rom drive (IDE) I have attached, asks for a reboot, ok.....rebooting.

Again the computer starts and enters the disaster recovery option screen, i hear the tape drive start, few seconds go by, the suddenly i get the following message on the screen;

"Please insert proper OBDR tape. Tape Name: Random ID: 0 Seq.No: 0"

Please don't tell me that the tapes are bad or something like that!

The jobs done in the past were full backups, registry, mailaccounts and everything, 4 "disks" in the RAID were confirmed in the logs as backed up, so what's up with this?
(I have copies of the exchange databases though, but not the active directory ones because they are locked as windows is running)

Do I need the actual windows 2000 driver for the tape drive? (i would assume the arcserve disaster recovery program can use it just as the windows program uses it -without any specual drivers).
The tape drive is a Hewlett packard surestore Dat40.

Sorry for the lenghty post, but I hope I have described the problem and issues good enough for someone out there to recognise or see a solution. I am running out of ideas here.

(Ps. The creation of disaster recovery bootdisks also failed because arcserve 2000 kept asking for NT disks instead of windows 2000 disks during that process, so that also failed.)

Thank you.

 

[mohamdr]

Hi
Forget DR recovery now

1-Is your Exchnage server installed on member server Or on DC.
2-If it is inatlled on DC ,do you have another DC in your enviroment?

3-If you have another DC in your network then
Install th OS and same as prevoius SP

4-install Exchange using Setup.exe /DisasterRecovey
5- follow the below doc to restore your Exchange Database

http://support.ca.com/techbases/basb9/basb9_1012.html

God Help you

regards
mohamdr

 

[znapper]

Hi tnx for answering so fast, I've also sent a mail to CA support, but i havent gotten a reply yet...anyway about your points (good ones)

> 1-Is your Exchnage server installed on member server Or
> on DC.

The server in question was the DC.



> 2-If it is inatlled on DC ,do you have another DC in your > enviroment?

No, this is the only one, because we simply don't have any other server running... :/

> 3-If you have another DC in your network then
> Install th OS and same as prevoius SP
> 4-install Exchange using Setup.exe /DisasterRecovey
> 5- follow the below doc to restore your Exchange Database

http://support.ca.com/techbases/basb9/basb9_1012.html

Tnx, but I think that cannot be done then.....
However, I DO have 3 MS backups on disk which contain system state and active directory information, though from a fairly eary stage.

Been thinking and I've found the Arcserve approch to be rather useless too, though the backup tapes still contain some data, so I may be able to get stuff back trough the mainprogram in windows 2000.

A tip from a friend was this;

-> Set up the server as it's own DNS (as it was before)

-> Configure it to be the DC (i have the names etc in my head, so that should be ok).

-> Do a "restore system state", (if possible) from backup tapes, OR from the microsoft system disk backup files i have.

-> Insert the exhange disk and run setup with disaster recovery option

-> Patch windows and exchange with latest Sp's

-> Recover the latest exchange database and log files and re-attach them in exchange (I have the originals in a secure location on another partition so that should work)

After this, I should have the system more or less back up and running again according to him.

How does that sound?

Btw, do you have any good idea why the tapes are innaccessible in the Arcserve 2000 Disaster Recovery systems as I was talking about in the original post?
I find it hard to belive that the tapes should be useless if Arserve itself have been using them as backupmedia for 1 year.... hmm...

Anyway, tnx for a good and quick reply

Znapper

 

[mohamdr]

Hi
You should have more than one DC in your network having only one is really big problem incase happen what happen to you.
if you had another DC life will be easier since you can retrieve all you mailboxes by restoring exchange using Setup /DisasterRecovey ,you will loss only the messages
and then can be restored from the backup.

I am disagree with you regards ARCserve is useless, it doesn't the way you are follwoing is not the correct 'way
you should also regularly restore your backup to a test server not waiting till the disater Strike and then cry.

I will ask our Administrator nad update you soon


regards
mohamdr

 

[mohamdr]

Hi

1- install win2000 from scratch and apply the SP same as the previous before the disaster strike, install it to the same partition

2-you told you have a backup of system state taken by windows back is that correct? ,
run win2000 and restore the system state
follow this document

http://support.ca.com/techbases/as2000/as2k-18150.html

and run windows backup instead on ARCserve and restore it

3-install exchange using /DisasterRecovey to same

4-Install the ARCserve Exchange Agent and configure it

5-restore it by following the doc

http://support.ca.com/techbases/basb9/basb9_1012.html

don't worry about Disaster recovery now it is most important to restore you Exchange database ASAP
I know the difficult situation you are in


regards
mohamdr

 

[System110]

Hi Mohamdr,

In such case do we have to install the OS and Arcserve 2000, as I have lost the registration id of one of my exchange agent, What do I do now?

Thanks,

 

[mohamdr]

Hi
When you first time install ARCserve components it is going to work for one month by default.
if you face any type of problem regards the licenses contact Euro.tlc@ca.com they will be helping you to get your license fixed or send you a temp license for an
emergency license maybe you need to contact them by phone
all licensing department phone are in support.cai.com

regards,
mohammdr

 

[LeoVilla]

Hi, OBDR is One Button disaster recovery, this is a feature of HP drives. If Disaster recovery was installed before the crash, it makes the tape bootable. It means if you hold the eject button of your drive while turning on the computer, it boots from the tape and the DR goes really easy.
I Hope this help you. (sorry for my basic english)

 

[ajtmcse]

OBDR only works if you have enabled it in the Create Boot Kit Wizard of the DR feature.

 

[znapper]

Hello mohamdr and all the others, the system is now up and working again, no data was lost (except from mail sent to the domain more then 5 days ago offcrouse).

What I did was;

I got a friend over who knows arcserve a little more then I do, he rebuilded the database in arcserve from the last known good backup. (I didn't knew anything about a arcserve database or anything like that because I got the server more or less finished conigured in my hands and have no real excperience with admining/recovery so.....).

Anyway arcserve needs its database so that one can select which session to restore, so we rebuilded that one.
Then we tried to run a full recovery from that tape, it has full backup, system state, registry all disks etc, so it should be able to get all back as before...
No luck though, for some reason the system had lots of problems with disks after the recovery (no cd-rom etc), so it was rather useless.
However, the recovery had managed to rebuild the user database and the active directory and it did have network connection.
So we installed win2k server on my laptop, configured it as secondary DC and loaded the whole AD structure on that one, then we made my laptop DC master and scrappped the original server.
All we did then was reinstall win2k server on the original machine, install AD so it got all users back again, set it to domain master and ran exchange setup with /disasterrecovery option.
Now the system works just fine again, dunno why the restore from tape didn't work, it was impossible to get hardware like cd's and ide stuff to work no matter how many reinstalls, new driver etc we tried...weird, the drive configuration may have changed (c, d and so on) or something similar, i really don't know.

Anyway, luck was on my side i guess, and as the two post above me says, seemes like i tried a make bootable tape before i created a cd image, making atrcserve to create a boot cd which relied on bootable tapes or something like that it may go better if i hadn't tried to make a bootable tape before making the boot cd image, i don't really know.

Anyway, I've learned a lot these past days (worked 32 hours straight until yesterday noon before it was up), it will go faster next time though, because I now know a hell of a lot more then before the crash (both about AD and arcserve).

Tnx again for your input, getting a DC up from tape or a old windows backup is the way to go if restore dosen't work.


Znapper

 

[squid64]

Hey not sure if someone coverd this,,,But you have to make a OBDR tape of the system BEFORE the crash.Sounds like you may have been doing backups but never configured for an OBDR tape...in any event congrads on getting it done....