Windows 2003 and veritas backup exec 11D

[Garyd53]

Hi Guys,

I am having a problem with Symantec Backup Exec 11D on my windows 2003 server SP2 the backups are exeeding the job maximm runtime. The backups are schedule to run at 6pm and finish at 6am back. When the backup start it backs up about 4 servers which takes it up to about 11pm and after that it does not back anything else up. When the backup Exec 11D was running on a windows 2000 SP4 it was succesfully completing the backups but since we moved it to server 2003 SP2 backups are not completing.All settings seems fine in backup exec. Could it be because we are using SP2 instead of SP1 for server 2003.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[theaman]

Hi,

Have you update backup Exec (should be on SP2)?
Is it running out of space on the tape?
Is it doing a full backup?
Do you have verification running?
Are you backing up open files (Exchange) and is it haning?

Can you just leave it over the weekend to run with out having the job maximum runtime setup and see what are the event logs saying.

[PiqueABoo]

Could it be because we are using SP2 instead of SP1 for server 2003.

No. What do the event logs say?

should be on SP2

BE 11d is at SP4 now.

[Garyd53]

Backup Exec is on SP4
The tapes are 800GB and its only backing up 550GB
It is doing a full backup and the option to verify data after backup is set
We are not using exchange they are all file servers that we are backing up.

By the if there is a file open, will veritas not skip the file and move on?

[theaman]

It will backup the file even if it is open, as it opens a tem copy of the file when you amend a file.

Are the tapes on over write old media?

Take off job maximum runtime and when you get in see what the backup is asking of you it may say backing up, insert new media, bad media ...but you will know

or take off verify as that can get stuck

[Garyd53]

I took off the job maximum runtime and when i came in this morning it ask me to insert overwritable media. The backup tapes are 800GB and the BACKUPS does not seem to be getting pass 5510GB this implies bad media. Doesn't it?

[theaman]

Maybe if you are using the same tape..

Format the tape tonight and run the backup, you may not have it set on over write.

[spc-rocket]

I took off the job maximum runtime and when i came in this morning it ask me to insert overwritable media. The backup tapes are 800GB and the BACKUPS does not seem to be getting pass 5510GB this implies bad media. Doesn't it?

Are you sure that it is 800gb on backup tapes or is this with compression. If they are LTO3 tapes then it will be 400Gb native and 800Gb compressed. However 800Gb is assuming a 2:1 compression which i don't think you will get as some files will already be compressed.

550Gb should fit on one tape but it depends on the data backed up. We have 2 tapes for the full backups and 1 tape for each week day (Mon-Thur) for differential backup.

Have you checked what kind of compression ration you are getting. You can do this by going into media and then clicking on a particular tape that has been used to backup data. At the bottom it will show you all kinds of info i.e. soft errors, how data is backed up, is it overwriteable, appendable etc.

Ash.

[Garyd53]

This is what is reads:

GENERAL STATISTICS

Media Kabel: Friday-1 Hours in use: 33.5
Discription: Data: 474 GB
Export Pending: No Used Capacity: 373 GB
Media Type: LTO Available Capacity: 17.6 GB
Media Set: DAILY Total Capacity: 391 GB
Media Location: Compression Ratio: 1.27:1
Creation Date: 27/03/2009 18:00:11 Bytes Written: 1.85 TB
Allocated Date: 12/06/2009 18:00:10 Bytes Read: 7.00 MB
Modified Date: 13/06/2009 01:23:38 Mounts: 9
Overwrite Protection Until: Overwriteable Seeks: 170
Appendable Until: Not appendable media Full


Under the errors section the seek errors, Soft Write Errors, Hard Write Errors, Soft Read Errors and Hard Read Errors are all 0.

Canyou please explain what these all mean.

Thanks for yorr help

[john]

From that I would say the tape is full, your data must be fairly well compressed before it gets to it, the figures on the tape of 400:800GB are based, as has been said, on the 2:1 perfection ratio of compression, you are getting little over 1 so you are still fairly close to the native 1:1 ratio thus giving you 400GB of use. So basically the way I read that you are at the capacity of the tape and need to either reduce the backup, split it over two tapes or chuck some junk out.

[Garyd53]

How about getting larger tapes? Does this mean i would need another backup device that support larger tapes. Or the same backup device with larger tapes.

[john]

Depends what the drive is and if it will take larger tapes. What make and model is the drive.

[spc-rocket]

From that I would say the tape is full, your data must be fairly well compressed before it gets to it, the figures on the tape of 400:800GB are based, as has been said, on the 2:1 perfection ratio of compression, you are getting little over 1 so you are still fairly close to the native 1:1 ratio thus giving you 400GB of use. So basically the way I read that you are at the capacity of the tape and need to either reduce the backup, split it over two tapes or chuck some junk out.

I agree with this that the tape is getting full and therefore your backups will need to be spread over two tapes. I kinda anticipated this with our setup so we just set aside two tapes for a full backup even when it was not needed.

Its your drive can take LTO4 tapes then these will give you more capacity but it depends on the drive and what media type it can take.


Ash.

[Garyd53]

HP Storage Works Ultrium 960 Tape Drive

[Garyd53]

Can you please advise if i can have larger capacity tapes with the above drive.