Feature Request: File Recovery from Tape

[CrefeldT]

FYI: There is a "Case #07507810 — File Recovery Strategy" about this issue.

The result of a talk with your engineer was that we were suggested to send a feature request to this forum.

I'm not sure if you can access this case so I will try to summarize how we deal with this need today and how we could imagine that it could be done more effectively by an additional feature.

Basically this issue is about recovering files (or directories) from tapes directly. There is a file to tape backup job every week with an incremental backup of a MS server volume onto two separate tape archives. This setup is completely independent of the GFS backup that is being used for the rest of our infrastructure.
The goal of this backup is the creation of a (redundant) long term archive (10 yrs) on tape. Additionally it must be possible to remove files from the server after e.g. 2 years in order to provide more file space. Of course those files are only on tape thereafter.

In rare cases it could be necessary to recover them back to the server.
This works by using the menue item "Files" within VBR but when it comes to the step "Objects to restore" we have to select a restore point. There we get several restore points that contain a version of some of the files that shall get recovered. To recover the "newest" version of all files we have to recover every restore point (and select the option "Overwrite only if backup contains a newer version") one after the other. This works but it isn't very effective and can take several hours of "clicking".

It would be very helpful if there is a possibility to recover the whole backup chain for these files instead of a single restore point.
AFAIK the database is containing the information at which tapes a file has been saved during a file-to-tape backup. With this information a recovery process could probably select exactly which restore points are needed for recovery.
If this isn't possible another approach could be to simulate what we are doing right now: Recover all pre-selected restore points one after the other with active option "Overwrite only if backup contains a newer version".

I'd like to hear your opinion!

Regards,
Tobias Crefeld.

[Dima P.]

Hello Tobias,

Thank you for your request! To rephrase - you would like to restore specific file /folder versions instead of restoring several restore points, correct?

[CrefeldT]

Hi Dmitry,

actually I would like to recover the latest version of a folder.

To give you an example: Restore point A contains folder1 with file1, restore point B contains folder1 with file2, restore point C contains folder1 with a newer file1 and file3.
In order ro recover the folder1 with the whole backup chain as source I want to select folder1 only (without selecting a specific restore point) . Thereafter VBR should recover folder1 with newest file1 (from restore point C), file2 (from restore point B) and file3 (from restore point C.

Regards,
Tobias Crefeld.

[Dima P.]

Hello Tobias,

It's possible today - whenever you select the restore point for a folder it automagically builds the list of all files within the folder for the selected date even if such files were processed earlier but were present in the folder during this backup job run. Thank you!

[CrefeldT]

I will try if it works as you describe.

But if I understand you right, this won't help: Files that have been removed from file server, still don't get recovered by recovering a later restore point, correct?
As described in the beginning, removing of files from the file server after e.g. 2 years is a normal procedure.