Restoring Exchange, Oracle or SQL LUNs to a filer requires a specific selection as outlined in the attached Word document.
Symptoms: Individual LUN files can be restored, but are not visible on the NetApp filer.
NetApp filers are able to supply LUNs that can be mounted on other system for use by applications like Exchange, SQL and Oracle. This data is stored in .lun files on the filer, and they are visible and available for backup just like any other file when using the NDMP plugin.
However, there are complications when attempting to backup/restore LUNs on NetApp filers. In order for them to be recognized by the filer and mounted, it appears that there has to be additional meta data present. This meta data doesn't appear to be supplied by the filer's dump and restore commands.
We suggest backing up the volume containing the LUN in a snapshot - when restoring the entire snapshot, the metadata seems to be present.
Please refer to attached word document for screenshots outlining the procedure.
NOTE: on some versions of the NDMP plugin we can see NDMP_ILLEGAL_ARGS_ERR error message if using DAR so if this is the case use the option “Never Do Direct Access Restore”
