How to Test and Restore?

[Greasemonkey1]

Hi Everyone,

I just have simple question for Veritas backup and that is, how do I know that the backup is working other then the fact that it tells me that the schedule backup is 100% complete.

Is there a way for me to test the backup so that I know it work?


Regards

Phu Nguyen

 

[SQLBill]

Do a restore of the data.

-SQLBill

 

[Greasemonkey1]

Thanks Bill for the quick response!

I could do a restore, but what if something fail during the restore. I just don't want to fix or restore something that does not need to be restore, but I also want to know that the backup is working the way I want it to be.

I am resposible for the data on the server and the data that are being backed up. If I there's a way for me to know that the backup is working correctly it would let me sleep a little better at night. Thanks again and please let me know if you have any other ideas..

Regards

Phu Nguyen

 

[Frankenherder]

Greasemonkey,

I do not understand your question.

If you want to test a back up, you do a restore. The back up logs can show success but your media may be faulty and have no data. In order to test the data, you need to restore. Not necessarily to the same Database though. Create another database server in a VMware session or something and redirect the data to go there, then log on and check it.

Hope this is the type of answer you were looking for.

Matt

 

[SQLBill]

I am the DBA for a SQL Server. What I did was:
- take the SQL Server off-line,
- copy the files to another location
- delete the original files
- restore from tape
- verify the restore worked

If the restore failed, all I had to do was copy the data files from my new location to where they had been.

You might be able to do something similar.

Veritas also has the ability to restore to a new location. You could do like Matt suggested, create another server and restore to there.

-SQLBill

 

[technoshrink]

The 100% sure way to make sure a backup is working is to restore to another location and make sure the data is there and it is what it is supposed to be. You can try restoring data and reading it or restoring a program and trying to run it.

Good luck!

 

[Greasemonkey1]

Thank you very very much guys. You guys have given me a couple of ideas which I will try this weekend. Our server is nothing complicated, just a file server in a workgroup environment.

I think I will try to restore it to another locations. If I don't have another computer, what I might try to do then is just copy a folder to another locations, delete the folder, then try to restore it. Similar to what you did SQLBILL

I also have another question, does Veritas BE allow you to restore say just a folder from the backup instead of everything from the backup?

Thank you all for taking the time to reply back to my email. I am new at using Veritas but I can see that it's definiately better then Windows BACKUP, eventhough it's made by the same company. The windows version is like a big teaser for you to get the new version! ahehe

Regards

Phu Nguyen

 

[SQLBill]

Yes, go to the restore tab. You'll see the computers/servers that you backed up. Expand the one you want, keep expanding, find the backup you want restored. You can expand all the way down to the actual files (not just the folder, but the actual file itself).

-SQLBill

 

[Greasemonkey1]

wow that is great. Thanks for all your help.

 

[Greasemonkey1]

I have just erased a file and just as bill said I as able to restore that files. Works good, good investment!

 

[FUBARinSFO]

Do any of the current versions of BE have "compare after backup"? The BE 4.x or so that I used a while ago did (Seagate), and that is what I always used to ensure the backups were good (short of doing a full restore as suggested above). Note that this is not the same as "verify" backup, which is nothing more than a simple parity check read of the backup file, not a compare of backup file contents against the original source files.

-- Roy Zider