Greenplum Disaster Recovery common failures

Products

• VMware Tanzu Data Suite
• Greenplum
• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Issue/Introduction

'gpdr restore' attempt fails with either of the below errors

[gpadmin@host1 ~]$ gpdr restore -t full --restore-point 20250327-125232R_gpdr_full_backup
20250408:11:49:27 gpdr:gpadmin:host1:3464648-[INFO]:-Restoring database cluster
20250408:11:49:38 gpdr:gpadmin:host1:3464648-[ERROR]:-error occurred while restoring database cluster: unable to write restore state: exit status 53
Please refer to /home/gpadmin/gpAdminLogs/gpdr_20250408.log file for details.
20250408:11:49:38 gpdr:gpadmin:host1:3464648-[ERROR]:-unable to clean up pgbackrest.*restore.* processes on segments
20250408:11:49:38 gpdr:gpadmin:host1:3464648-[ERROR]:-error occurred during cleanup restore: could not kill pgbackrest restore processes: unable to clean up pgbackrest.*restore.* processes on segments
[gpadmin@host1 ~]$ 

or

[gpadmin@host1 ~]$ gpdr restore -t full --restore-point 20250327-125232R_gpdr_full_backup
20250408:11:51:05 gpdr:gpadmin:host1:3464776-[INFO]:-Restoring database cluster
20250408:11:51:06 gpdr:gpadmin:host1:3464776-[ERROR]:-error occurred while restoring database cluster: one or more data directories are not empty: Cannot run full restore if data directories are not empty. Either run incremental restore or delete the existing directories before running full restore.
Please refer to /home/gpadmin/gpAdminLogs/gpdr_20250408.log file for details.
[gpadmin@host1 ~]$

 

Environment

All versions of GPDB and GPDR

Cause

These are indications that either scenario is true:

A. The directories that GPDR is expecting to restore to are not empty and need to be cleared of any remaining data before attempting a restoration

B. The gpadmin user is unable to either read or write to the 'data' directories used by GPDR.

Resolution

If encountering either of these scenarios, double check that all data directories are both clear, and owned by gpadmin with write permissions. Once this is verified you can attempt the restoration again. Additional information on the specific host and directory failing can be found in the GPDR logs at '/home/gpadmin/gpAdminLogs/'