Backup Exec jobs stuck on "queued"

[sdc]

Hi

We're trying to back up our servers to a LaCie 6TB NAS device with Backup Exec 12.5. Initially we ran a single huge backup and it took well over 30 hours to run, so decided to try multiple smaller backups.

Trouble is, none of the backups will run - they sit as "queued" and won't budge until I reboot the server running Backup Exec. I've deleted and re-created the job, deleted and re-added the NAS device to Backup Exec, and am now stumped.

Anyone else found a solution to this? The ones about pausing and unpausing the server (found on Google) and disabling and re-enabling the device (similarly found on Google) have no effect whatsoever.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Stephen

[graywoodford]

we had a similar issue but the pause and unpause solved our issue but we was stumped for a good month with it, sorry cant be any more help

[sdc]

we had a similar issue but the pause and unpause solved our issue but we was stumped for a good month with it, sorry cant be any more help

Thanks; I appear to have progressed slightly this morning... two of the four 'trial' jobs we've set up are now running but the other two are not. The two that work are standard file servers; the two that are still stuck on 'queued' are one of our DCs and the Exchange server. I've removed and re-added the Backup-to-Disk folder to Backup Exec, and as soon as I added it, all four jobs kicked off - the two mentioned running perfectly, the other two queued. I have set the limit to the number of concurrenct connections to 12 to allow this number of jobs to run, so that shouldn't be the issue...

Any further thoughts appreciated!
Stephen

[plug1]

Mate I have the exact same problem with the exact same hardware!! Same version of backup exec. Ive had a few successful backups but now they are back to queued! Where are you with this?

[mattx]

I always found stopping and starting the BackupExec services helped when jobs failed to run......
Something you may want to try.

[plug1]

I always found stopping and starting the BackupExec services helped when jobs failed to run......
Something you may want to try.

Rebooting the server helps in the short term but it starts hapening again the next week when the job goes to run. Restarting the services doesnt help at all. The Job Engine service seems to hang, although I can stop the service I can still see it running in the task manager?

[mattx]

Rebooting the server helps in the short term but it starts hapening again the next week when the job goes to run. Restarting the services doesnt help at all. The Job Engine service seems to hang, although I can stop the service I can still see it running in the task manager?

Can you kill the service in Task Manager ?
If not it sounds like it's being held open somehow - I suggest you either DL the admin bar and use Process Explorer or get it from Process Explorer and see what else it's linked to when it's hanging.....

[sdc]

OK, a bit of an update on my progress on this (albeit not all that much progress!!).

Firstly, I've discovered that Backup Exec seems to be very unhappy about backing up with GRT (Granular Recovery Technology) to a hard disk that is not local to the backup server. Therefore, because we're backing up to a NAS box, it won't play. So I've turned off GRT on the Mail Server and the Active Directory Domain Controller and - so far - it seems to be working OK. Bit of a nuisance though, as GRT was one of the main reasons I had for getting Backup Exec in the first place. That's stage 1. Stage 2 will be to make all these backups run automatically at the right times - preferably overnight. Currently our main file server takes in excess of 6 hours to back up; and that's at a speed of around 720MB per minute. I really don't want that going on during the day...!

Stage 3 is to take these backups located on the NAS (which is a very snazzy-looking 6TB Lacie rackmount box) and back them up to tape via an autoloader we've bought. This is a Freecom device, which takes up to 16 DLT tapes at one time via two long cartridges. This is connected to the backup server via SCSI, and Backup Exec sees it quite happily. I've not yet tried to do a backup to it, but that's mainly because the configuration is so complex. Once I've got the backups to the NAS working OK then I'll start looking at the tapes, and try to remember to report back here again!

Just in case anyone's interested, for safety and disaster recovery purposes, we've located the backup server in our main server room (so that it's on the same gigabit switch as all our servers), but the NAS is in a separate building (at least 250 metres away) in a secure room with its own dedicated gigabit fibre link in to the core server switch.

If anyone's had any experience with any of the above they'd care to share, I'd be very grateful! I'm about to phone Symantec and see what training courses they offer in the UK on Backup Exec....! I suspect they cost a fair bit but I think the investment will be worthwhile - given that our entire system will be relying on this software in the event of failure!

[sdc]

Just wondering if there's anyone in the Dorset area who uses Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 successfully and would be willing to meet up to share some experiences and maybe give us a bit of a demo please?!

Thanks
Stephen