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I have been tasked with backing up our OS drive on our on premises Metallic Gateway. We need to include the servers Window’s System State as part of the backups. I have looked in our File Server list in metallic, and I do not see the gateway listed. I know the server has the File System agent already installed on it from when Metallic was originally installed. Is It considered a best practice to back up the gateway’s OS drive. I should note the the gateway is also a cache server for local backups, and we do not want to backup the deduped data volumes. 

If backing up the OS drive of the Metallic Gateway is not recommended,  what is the general process for rebuilding the OS drive on that server?

 

 

Hello @markbuxton 

The Gateway server is a completely replaceable server and in the case of a outage or issue it is faster to rebuild a new server and push the software then it is to restore the data. 

The only data worth protecting on the server is the DDB its self and that will by default already be protected. This is the only data that will be protected in the case of a reconstruction needed. 

NOTE: The DDB can be rebuilt from nothing if this backup is not working. 
NOTE NOTE: Everything on the gateway is to enable backups and increase efficiency but it is all replaceable. 

Kind regards
Albert Williams

I agree,

generally, if original server gets broken, just configure a new with the same hostname. Once you install the MediaAgent package all configuration will be loaded and what's missing (deduplication engine path, index cache) recreated. For DDB original root folder needs to be re-created.

Thanks for the replies.  I will update my disaster recovery runbooks with these strategies in min.  

If the MediaAgent server is lost and a new one is setup to replace it, How long does it take to recreate the DDB? Is it as simple as Metallic auto importing the DDB backup, or will Metallic need to rescan the entire cache/repository and reconstruct the DDB.  

Hello @markbuxton 

It is a “how long is a piece of string” kind of question as it depends on a lot of factors. 

If all is protected with the DDB backup it will restore this and then only have what ever time between the DDB backup and todays date to catch up on. 

If the DDB backup is not present or having issues it will need to go to the disk library and collect the data to rebuild. 

Depending on your read speed and the amount of data as well as your DDB backup status all effect the run time of a DDB recon job. 

 

Kind regards

Albert Williams

If the MediaAgent server is lost and a new one is setup to replace it, How long does it take to recreate the DDB? Is it as simple as Metallic auto importing the DDB backup, or will Metallic need to rescan the entire cache/repository and reconstruct the DDB.  

from my experience, considering that we are talking about the Metallic here, usually the DBB size isn’t that great and there’s daily DDB backup in place. Usually, it takes 30-60 minutes for tiny sites and 2-3 hours for bigger ones. Of course, once we are following restore from DDB backup scenario. Complete rebuilt can take much longer. 

Thanks for the responses. Glad to learn that if the backups of the DDB are not available, the DDB can be rebuilt from the deduped data repository. It is good to know the time involved in the 2 recovery senecios. 

Its also a good thing to know that the DDB is only used for backups.

A restore does not use or need the DDB to be online to be successful. 

 

Kind regards

Albert Williams

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