Using Veritas Netbackup to restore boot disk

[Jim McKee_1]

Has anyone used Veritas Netbackup to do a complete restore of vg00?

The basic plan is to do a cold install of HP-UX, install the Netbackup client, and then do a restore from a Netbackup full backup.

What problems will I run into doing this?

I know that Ignite would be a better way to do this, but Ignite is not an option at this time.

Jim

[Geoff Wild]

Havn't had to do that - in theory it should work....we backup our server OS's with Netbackup as well as make_net_recovery them.

Rgds...Geoff

[Chris Watkins_1]

As long as the backup is from the same machine,
I don't believe you'll have any real issues with this.

I wouldn't do it for an upgrade of any sort... only if I was
doing a cold install for purposes of getting the box back to square 1.

If the backup is from a different machine, same OS, I'd still
be careful to not overwrite certain files when restoring... like:

/etc/ioconfig
/etc/fstab
/etc/mnttab
/etc/lvmconf
etc...
(Or at least make copies before the restore)


I'd reserve this method for those occasions when the OS is
hosed for whatever reason, and you want to get back to
what you have on backup tapes... but you need the machine
bootable first, so you can install your backup client.
(Which is what it sounds like you may be doing)

Ignite is definitely better/faster/etc...

[Todd McDaniel_1]

I agree it will work as long as the backup is done on similar hardware. Just also make sure the Netbackup client is the same version as well... (ie same model box and the disks have to be at least as large as the host you did the backup on...)

It will be faster over the network than a local tape, but make_net_recovery is just as fast and has options for interactive restores...


__________________________
My personal choice would be to do the make_net_recovery...because you can do it all in one pass...

With make_net_recovery, you dont need a resident OS to do it just do a remote install and use the IP address...

This method will save a great amount of time IMHO... probably 4 hours at least.

[Mic V.]

To answer, no, I haven't. I've always used Ignite. I'm also not a NB expert, so someone else may be able to speak to specific NB issues.

I believe you'll have issues with open files -- it shouldn't be possible to overwrite them (remember how swinstall moves some files aside to be removed later?). Another issue that comes to mind is /etc/lvmtab and associated stuff. You probably don't want to restore /dev this way. Restoring key config files onto another server and then looking at them may help you understand how the original was configured.

If you cold install with exactly the same OS disks (version, date) and exactly the same patches as the one you want to restore with Veritas, I'd feel more comfortable with it.

Good luck. Your situation is not unique. :)

Mic