sussox Posted December 14, 2009 Report Share Posted December 14, 2009 I have a 2.5TB disk-set. I want to archive say 2TB to offline media, so that i get some free space for fresh backups.. How to do this correctly so that Retrospect can restore the old part of the set later if i want to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sussox Posted December 15, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 Nobody knows? This should be covered in the non-existing manual i think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mayoff Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 You can use a backup copy script to copy the data to a new set. If the original set is on a disk media set, you can then use the groom feature to remove past backups. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sussox Posted December 15, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 I guess i then can copy it "manually" aswell? If i later need to restore data from the archived part of the set, do i have to perform a rebuild of the filers then or what catalog file to use? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 If you are "archiving" past data, then once you have your new/archived media set -- you should have a catalog file made as part of the process. Just keep the catalog file along with the media set and you can use that to restore things. (Or, worse case -- if the catalog gets corrupt, you should be able to "rebuild" the catalog if necessary.) I'd second Robin's suggestion to copy things to a different media set so you aren't working with copies of media sets with the same name... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sussox Posted December 15, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 Ok.. Maybe im slow. But explain If i archive (with backup copy script) lets say 1TB of a 2.5TB set. Will not that only create a new retrospect-set containing the AB0022XX.rdb's from the original set? Without the catalog from the original set? If i restore the archive later i will end up with a bunch of "AB0022XX.rdb" files, without a catalog to go with it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 Ok.. Maybe im slow. Perhaps, but I think it's a matter of not understanding the Retrospect paradigm. Retrospect's backup sets (um, now called media sets) are a database, pure and simple. Retrospect does database operations on them. What used to be called a "Transfer" operation in previous versions of Retrospect is now done by a "backup copy script". Why, after all these years of trying to educate people on the difference between "copy/duplicate" and "backup", the terminology is now changing for no purpose other than change and confusion, is past me. The "catalog" is a database index into the database backup set (um, media set). But, a transfer operation (um, backup copy script) will allow you to create a new backup set (um, media set), and transfer contents from the older backup set to the new one. In the process of executing that backup copy script, Retrospect will create / update the catalog for the new backup set (um, media set). It's not a simple replication of .rdb files; it's database operations, creating/updating a new database. If i archive (with backup copy script) lets say 1TB of a 2.5TB set. Will not that only create a new retrospect-set containing the AB0022XX.rdb's from the original set? No. See above. Without the catalog from the original set? No. See above. If i restore the archive later i will end up with a bunch of "AB0022XX.rdb" files, without a catalog to go with it? No. See above. There really ought to be a manual for this type of stuff. It's been a year since the program was announced. There is no excuse. In the absence of a manual, I suggest that you contact EMC Retrospect support and get them to explain in detail how to do this. Here's the link: Contact EMC Retrospect support Perhaps, if the support burden gets too high because of the lack of documentation, the creation of a manual will be given higher priority (or at least some priority, as opposed to none). Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 What you *can't* do with the program (I asked about this once) is make a copy script that will copy the "members" folder from one place to another. The program is coded not to be allowed to do this. This doesn't mean you can't use another backup utility (like Carbon Copy Cloner) to copy the Media Set members folder to an archive disk - in which case you get the *full* members folder with the same name as what you might groom out of your non-archived media set. This is why you'd consider using the "copy backup" script to copy the backups you wish to retain to a new media set for archival purpose. This set will start over with 000000.rdb and go from there because it's a new set -- it's not just moving the files from one "members" folder to another... The *tricky* thing from your original question would be "how to archive 2TB of a 2.5TB media set". It really depends on what you are backing up as to how easy/hard that would be to accomplish. You might be better served to just archive the *whole* set and then start a new clean set for your current backups. Then, if this is to be a repeated occurence (where you have a 2TB maximum limit for the "archive"), make sure you set the size of the media set to only be 2TB in size -- so the backups will stop when you hit that limit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted December 15, 2009 Report Share Posted December 15, 2009 What you *can't* do with the program (I asked about this once) is make a copy script that will copy the "members" folder from one place to another. The program is coded not to be allowed to do this. Interesting. I hadn't been aware of that. Would be useful for FTP off-site archiving. I think that has been mentioned before, perhaps by you, Steve. Russ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sussox Posted December 16, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2009 Ok, but if I create a new 1TB media set, choosing the old 2.5TB media set (disk) as source. How do i know what parts of the old set that is being copied? The reason why i don't want to recycle and create a new set is that there is so much data on the volume that is "static" and already exists in the old media set, so backing this up again in a new set would only be a waste of backupspace in my opinion.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maser Posted December 16, 2009 Report Share Posted December 16, 2009 If you create a "Copy Backup" script, you can "browse" for what backups to choose to copy from one media set to the other. But, without knowing what you are backing up, I can't say that you'll be able to easily get what you want. For example: If your 2.5TB media set is backing up a 4G database file which changes every day -- well, then that would be relatively easy to grab the "first 500" backups and move those to another media set -- then groom those first 500 backups out. But if your 2.5TB media set is backing up 100 clients -- and the *first pass* backup of all your clients is 1.5TB (meaning 1TB is "incremental" backup since then) -- trying to figure out how to archive 2.0TB of that is going to be very difficult. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.