Recovering from tape library

Data recovery from archives located on tape devices is performed in the same way as with other storage devices.

When recovering, you start creating a recovery task, select the tape device vault, and select the archive and the backup to recover data from. At task creation, the program uses the storage node database instead of accessing tapes. However, selection of data to recover (e.g. some files or specific volumes) requires reading of one or more tapes, so it might be durational.

The program finds the tapes and inserts them automatically in the right order. The Task Need Interaction window comes up if a required tape is not found.

Keep in mind that a data recovery operation may require access to a number of tapes. For example, data recovery from an incremental backup commonly might require loading, mounting, rewinding and reading of the following tapes containing the data backups:

  • tapes storing the incremental backup selected to recover the data
  • tapes storing the last full backup created before the selected incremental one
  • tapes storing the last differential backup created after the last full backup but before the selected incremental one if necessary
  • tapes containing all incremental backups created after the last full or differential backups before the selected incremental one if necessary.

While a recovery task is running, the following tape-specific information is accessible from the management console:

  • labels of all the tapes that may be required for the operation
  • label of the tape that is currently being read
  • labels of the tapes that have already been read
  • labels of tapes that are still waiting to be read with information of their current availability (loaded or not).

Recovering from tape library