VMware Individual File Restore Fails on Some Large XFS Volumes

Problem

You cannot browse and restore some individual directories or files from a VMware backup when the items were on large XFS volumes.

Error Message

There is no error message. The backup completes with status 0, but some items are not catalogued. They are not shown in the Backup, Archive, and Restore (BAR) window of the NetBackup Console or in bplist output.

Cause

Directories and files on large XFS volumes can have inode (index) values greater than the largest signed 32-bit integer. NetBackup cannot handle such large values.

If the volume is more than around half a terabyte, the inode values (indexes) for some directories and files may exceed the largest 32-bit signed integer (2147483647). NetBackup cannot process such "64-bit" indexes.

You can check the inode values for a directory with "ls -li". The first column in the output is the index. If the index for a directory is 2147483648 or greater, neither it nor its contents are catalogued in a backup. They are not shown in the BAR window or bplist.

Solution

There is no solution to recover affected directories and files individually with NetBackup 8.1.2. You will need to restore the VM and copy the files.

The problem is fixed in NetBackup 8.2.