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  1. Home
  2. Veritas NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide
  3. NetBackup protection against single points of failure
  4. Protecting against component failures
  5. Media server failures
  6. Restoring disk backups using an alternative media server.
Veritas NetBackup™ in Highly Available Environments Administrator's Guide

Restoring disk backups using an alternative media server.

NetBackup can share disk storage pools between multiple media servers. During restore, by default, NetBackup balances the job load and automatically directs the restore to the least busy media server rather than the one that made the backup. However, this process can cause problems if the media server selected to perform the restore is licensed as a SAN media server or does not have network access to the client which requires a restore.

There are three options available if you encounter this problem:

  • Configure the force restore media server setting as follows:

    • On UNIX and Linux master servers, you create FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER entry in the bp.conf file.

    • On Windows master server, you can define this setting in the NetBackup Administration Console.

      Go to Host Properties > Master Server.

      This setting works on a per-server basis. It lets you specify a media server for restore operations based on the media server that is used to make the backup. To ensure that the same media server is used to make the backup and the restore, specify the same name for the backup and restore server.

  • Create the touch file USE_BACKUP_MEDIA_SERVER_FOR_RESTORE, as follows:

    • On UNIX and Linux master server, create the file in /usr/openv/netbackup/db/config

    • On Windows master server, create the file in <install path>\veritas\netbackup\db\config.

      USE_BACKUP_MEDIA_SERVER_FOR_RESTORE is a global setting and always forces restore to the server that did the backup.

    Note:

    When the USE_BACKUP_MEDIA_SERVER_FOR_RESTORE touch file is created, all FAILOVER_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER and FORCE_RESTORE_MEDIA_SERVER settings are ignored.

  • Run the restore from the command line using the bprestore -disk_media_server command. This setting works on a per job level. It also lets you specify the media server that is required for the specific restore job. Unlike the other two options, this setting is dynamic and can be applied when needed.

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