5 1 0:NDMP Restore

Welcome to the latest SEP sesam documentation version 5.1.0 Apollon. For previous documentation version(s), check documentation archive.

Overview

Additional resources

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Check FAQ to find the answers to most common questions.

Problems? See the Troubleshooting Guide.

If you are using an older SEP sesam version, refer to Documentation archive.

To successfully restore an NDMP backup, make sure that all prerequisites are met and preparation steps are performed. See also NDMP Backup.

How you perform the NDMP restore depends on how you created the backup. For example, if you have created a dump backup (default), you perform a normal restore. If you have created an smtape backup (supported only by NetApp), you must define additional arguments for the smtape restore in the Target Settings step of the restore wizard.

SEP sesam supports complete restore and selective restore from dump backups. For smtape backups only the complete restore is supported.

You can restore single files from dump backups in one of two ways:

Perform a normal selective restore without mounting to restore the data to the device from where it was backed up, e.g., NDMP server.
Use the option Mount saveset to mount the target saveset to the disk and make it accessible as if it were a separate volume on the disk. For mounting advantages, see Cross-platform recovery file system layer (XPRFS).

Note that SEP sesam provides the web Restore Assistant interface, which is more intuitive and provides additional advanced options compared to the GUI restore wizard, while on the other hand it does not support restore of special task types, such as NDMP, MS SQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc. For these task types, you can only use the GUI restore wizard to restore your data. However, you can restore data from NDMP file system Path backups via the web Restore Assistant. For details, see Restore Assistant.

Restoring NAS volume data is simple and straightforward. The basic restore steps in the GUI restore wizard are described below.

Prerequisites

Make sure that you have the required permissions and access rights for NDMP restore.
Ensure that there is sufficient free space on the target storage system to which you are restoring your data.

Additional requirements for smtape restore

Ensure that the destinatiom storage system has about 100 MB more disc space than the amount of data you are restoring.
The volume to which you are going to restore data must be of type DP (data protection) and must be put in a restricted state before you perform the restore. See the NetApp documentation for more information.
smtape restore completely overwrites the destination volume; make sure that no critical data is stored on the target volume.

Restoring NDMP

For details on configuring a restore task and a description of the various restore options, see Standard Restore Procedure. Only NDMP-specific steps and options are described in this section.

Note

Direct access recovery (DAR) is used during backup to enable selective restore. DAR is enabled by default. If you have disabled it when you created a backup task, you cannot perform a selective restore. For details, see dump backup.
When performing a selective NDMP restore, no empty directories are restored (created) on the target if:
- empty directories are present in the restore list along with normal directories and files (this is a known issue, but too minor to warrant a fix)
- at least one file is selected in another directory, for example, if the backup source is /vol/vol1 and the restore selection is /vol/vol1/dir_1/file_1 and /vol/vol1/empty_dir

NDMP backups can be restored to the same or to a different location. For smtape restore, an additional step (step 5) is required to specify the smtape restore type.

NDMP restore can be performed using the Restore Assistant. You can access the Restore Assistant in one of the following ways:

via the GUI: by clicking the Restore Assistant icon in the toolbar or from Activities -> Restore Assistant
from SEP sesam Web UI: left menu -> Restore Assistant
or by entering the following address in the browser bar: http://[sesamserver]:11401/sep/ui/restore/.

With the web Restore Assistant, you can restore NDMP to the original or another location using simple or advanced UI mode. When using advanced UI mode, an additional Options tab is available for setting the advanced restore options. For more details, see Restore Assistant.

Open the Restore Assistant in the browser.
In the Start window, select Files and directories. If you want to perform the restore in the advanced UI mode, select Advanced View and then click Next.
In the Client window, select your NDMP client.
In the Task window, under Task selection, select your backup task. A backup task defines the source data that was backed up by the client.

	Tip
	You can search for a file or directory by entering your search term in the Search for files or directories in all backups field.

Under Backup selection, select the exact backup version you want to restore. You can use the calendar function in the upper right corner to set a date range for the backups.
Then select whether you want to perform a selective or complete restore and click Next. Note that a selective restore requires an additional step. For a complete restore, you are immediately taken to Target window.

In the Files window, select one of the following options:

To restore single files from the dump backup by mounting them, select the option Mount this backup in filesystem. This will mount the target saveset to the disk and make it accessible as if it were a separate volume on disk. Select the SEP sesam server or RDS to mount on and set additional mount options if required, and then click Mount this backup in filesystem.

	Note
	You can mount any saveset stored to the default data store Path, Si3 deduplication store, or HPE StoreOnce. Mounting is not possible if the savesets are stored on tapes or if the data is compressed or encrypted. For advantages on mounting a saveset, see Cross-platform recovery file system layer (XPRFS). The Mount saveset option is available only in advanced UI mode.

To use the standard way of selecting items from the backup, select Continue with regular backup file explorer.

Select the files you want to restore and click Next. This step is not available for complete restore.

In the Target window, you can choose to restore the NDMP backup data to the same location by using the Restore to original target path (default) option, or to a different location by deselecting this option and specifying the custom target path for restore.

If you are performing a normal restore (not smtape) and you choose a new restore target with non-existent directories, make sure that you restore your data to the top-level directory (without specifying non-existent subdirectories) by entering the target path as follows: /<volume_name>/<dir_1>. Non-existent subdirectories, for example, /<volume_name>/<dir1>/<dir2> are not supported as restore targets. Note that you can still restore NDMP to the new restore target subdirectories if they already exist.

	Warning
	Specifying non-existent subdirectories in the new target path will cause the restore operation to fail.

If you are performing a smtape restore, the restore destination must be the root of a volume, e.g., /vol/vol1.

This step is required only for smtape restore: in the Options window, enter the following in the Options for restore field:

 -a ndmp_tape_format=smtape

	Note
	The Options window for specifying advanced restore options is available only in advanced UI mode.

Click Next.

In the final step of the restore wizard, you can review all the settings of your restore task. You can also edit the settings by using the Back button. If you want to start your NDMP restore immediately, click Start restore. If you want to save the restore task, click Save restore task.

Note that after performing an smtape restore, the restored volume is in a read-only state. To make the destination volume writable, use the snapmirror break command. See the NetApp documentation for more information.

	Tip
	A restore task can be scheduled like any other task. If you want to add the NDMP restore task to the schedule, see Scheduling Restore.

You can monitor the restore progress using the Web UI (Monitoring -> Restores) or view the status in the GUI (Main Selection -> Job State -> Restores). The restore overview provides detailed information on the last run of restore jobs, including the task name, status (successful, error, in queue...), start and stop time of the last backup, data size, throughput, client, and message.

Known issues

If you have problems with NDMP restore, check the Troubleshooting Guide.