Ugo's Blog

I have worked a lot on my automated recovery script recently and finally got to a version that is a really good proof of concept and that I'm not scared to publish.  Plus, I have created a Gitub repo for documentation, issue management and, of course, Git features. The script is not perfect but it is even better than what I was planning when I wrote my first post on the topic: A lot of checks have been put in place to make sure all variables are provided, and in the right format There is an inline help with -h The script chooses a backup randomly amongst all the available backups, not only the 30 last ones It only requires bash, cURL and jq, on a machine that has access to the Networker REST API Only tested on RHEL 6 for now The script is not complete (I already created more than 10 issues to add features, improve current features or fix things), but it is a very good start for an organisation that wants to make recovery tests easier. The Github repo will also allow...

One feature that is lacking from Networker, compared to some of its competitors, is the built-in automatic recovery testing. However, when there's an API, there is a way.  Networker's REST API is not perfect, but it allows the backup administrator to perform queries about Networker resources (objects). As my workload is going up, I realize that one of the tasks that I tend to skip the most is the periodical recovery tests.  Don't forget that a a backup that is not tested should be considered non-successful. I also found out that my recovery tests were not diverse enough. When I started this project, I knew a little bit about REST APIs, and nothing about JSON processing. With the Networker REST API documentation, and the help of a friend and Networker Support staff, I was able to create HTTP queries with Postman,  cURL and jq . Once I got the queries that I needed, I put them in a bash script that would somehow select one backup, and then restore it. My first attem...