Recovery of Multi-boot/Multi-OS systems is NOT supported by Bare Metal Restore (BMR)

Problem

Multi-boot and Multi-OS systems are not supported by Bare Metal Restore (BMR).
Restores fail due to BMR not being able to identify the boot partition or create all needed partitions on the system disk.
 

Error Message

Restore fails with:
"The disks in this system do not meet the minimum requirements for restore. The restore cannot continue. Instead, a configuration discovery will be performed to gather the current configuration of this system. "

 

Cause

Bare Metal Restore (BMR) does not support Multi-Boot, Multi-OS environments.
BMR recovers at the disk level and all partitions contained within it.
BMR does not operate at the individual the partition level.

For Windows installs BMR only supports Windows partition types.
For Linux installs BMR only supports Linux partition types.

Additionally, Linux does not support overlapping disk partitions.
In example below note disk partition sdka1 is a Windows type.
Its boundaries overlaps the other partitions.
Also note that it is marked as the boot partition. Because this partition type is not visible to running Linux systems, BMR is unable to capture proper boot loader information and cannot make such systems bootable.

    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdak1   *       16065   285153749   142568842+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdak5           16128    41945714    20964793+  83  Linux
/dev/sdak6        41945778    94365809    26210016   83  Linux
/dev/sdak7        94365873   146785904    26210016   83  Linux
/dev/sdak8       146785968   209696444    31455238+  83  Linux
/dev/sdak9       209696508   276799949    33551721   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Solution

Multi-Boot Partition layouts are not supported. For environments described above, BMR is working as designed.
Do not use Multi-boot systems if you wish to use Bare Metal Restore (BMR) for system recoveries.
Disks with MBR style layouts can limit number of allocated active primary partitions.
Linux native LVM is supported and suggested for those environments.

Please note that Veritas Corporation reserves the right to remove any fix from the targeted release if it does not pass quality assurance tests or introduces new risks to overall code stability. Veritas's plans are subject to change and any action taken by you based on the above information or your reliance upon the above information is made at your own risk.

 

Applies To

Environments using Bare Metal Restore (BMR) on any supported  NetBackup version