madmatt

Good afternoon, all. Hopefully someone can guide me in the right direction.

I am in the midst of setting up a small network for a client. We went with Small Business Server, Backup Exec 11d, and a Dell RD1000 (80/160GB) drive. This will likely be the last time I buy one of these devices because it is not what I expected, especially since I am failing at making it work with Backup Exec.

Here are the details:

Since it is a USB device it cannot be added as a “Stand-alone Drive”. Therefore, my only option is “Removable Backup-to-Disk Folders”.

However, I am unable to complete a “Test Run” successfully. Here's why:

The “Media Capacity Check” returns a status of failed. All capacities are equal to “0.000 MB”.
The “Online Media Check” error message is: “Insufficient online or nearline media is available to start job.”
The “Overwrite Media Check” error message is: “There is no media online or nearline that can be overwritten or the job has been marked append/terminate.”

I have configured “Media Protection” to overwrite and the disks are not write protected. The “Total Byte Count” is also showing up correct. The "Media Type" is set to "FLDR".

Does anyone have any idea? Thank you.

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Sazar

/me slaps Matt

I gave you ideas. Go use them.

That is all.

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madmatt

You gave me one idea that included calling someone that cares; which I am not in the mood for right now. I will call Dell on Friday.

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Electronic Punk

We have these horrible little NAS at work which I have to backup to - I can't backup directly to them as they are not recognised by BEWS10.

What I do is backup to disk and then sync using xcopy to the nas using a post-command.

Would that be any use?

If so I can post the contents of the .bat tomorrow..

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madmatt

Please do. Thank you.

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Electronic Punk

No problem, but a few more details.

I have basically a single partition dedicated to backups. 300 gig. This matches the size of the NAS.

Say a full backup is 20 gig and you get incrementals of about 50 meg, so there is a few weeks of good redundacy.

I make each backu file about 100 meg so it can be easily synced (one large file would just cause issues I am sure - and I can set the overwrote protection period etc.)

It is working pretty well for us, although I hate the NAS device, if there is a powercut its default state is off - how bad is that!

Restores are damn quick though!

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madmatt

It's too late for me to change the partitions because of the way I do things.

C = System
D = Data
E = Exchange

But I think creating a folder on D then copying it over to the RD1000 will work perfectly. That was one heck of an idea that I never thought of; nobody at Symantec thought of it either.

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Electronic Punk

Thats why I do what I do - its something my boss and I have spent time developing after getting these horrible NAS boxes, but it has worked out well for us really adding an extra level of protection. Although I don't think I could recommend it over a standard device you could backup directly to - if it was in a different room - it does make the odd required restore very fast though!

So here are the details and will do my best to illustrate it accordingly! Where to choose - Scotland

Ok so this server is actually called SCSMS01 and the data can be found on SCEX01 so already I have redundancy as the data is on the live server and an additional server.

The partition is 208 gigs and the capacity of the NAS is 219 gig, not so important but the partition cannot be larger than the capacity of the NAS as the NAS will be a mirror image of the partition and there will be potential capacity problems if this is not the case. In the image it is already mapped as a Z drive and as you can see the F:\Live Backup folder is exactly replicated to Z:\ or \\SCNAS\backups

Attached Thumbnails

 

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Electronic Punk

Ok attached are the two batch files we use, you will of course need to modify them accordingly.

You will need to rename them batch files, I could allow forum batch file uploaded - but I think that poses a security risk - even though you could just as easily zip them!

Attached Files

	Transfer.txt (1.3 KB, 289 views)
	Transfer Manual.txt (1.3 KB, 208 views)

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Electronic Punk

BEWS settings are just as easy as adding a post command to run on the server local to where the data is being backed up.

Create a Back-up-disk folder. I had the files set to 100, if I had to do it again I would prob set it at 250. You many one to limit the number of files rather than setting the disk space reserve.

Then overwrite protection period is really down to you. I left append period open to make the most of the space.

Let me know if you need anything else!

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madmatt

What setting did you have set to 100, but you recommend 250? Files? What?

I'm going to go with a 80GB setup because the RD1000 disks are 80GB.

Thank you for your help EP.

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kcnychief

Somewhat OT - but what exactly do you do in the situations you guys have described during a crash for your apps? I see the apps are on a seperate partition, but if you have to restore/rebuild the System partition don't you still have to re-install all the apps since the registry entries are technically on the System partition? If so, what's the benefit?

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madmatt

I only keep Exchange on a different partition. All system programs (such as Microsoft programs and Symantec Antivirus/Backup Exec get installed on C). Client needed programs (such as Medisoft; medical billing software) do gte installed on the D partition. Those can easily be reinstalled manually and only the data then needs to be restored.

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kcnychief

That's what I thought - thanks for clarifying and sorry for thread hijacking

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Electronic Punk

The size of the backup-to-disk files matt.
I use 10 sadly, but its an option that must be there in 11.

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fitz

All I can say is.. "eww!" We had a similiar situation with our mail backups for a little bit and I'm glad to say we finally moved off it.

of course, in the next month or two we'll have our EMC SAN in place and I'll have a whole new backup nightmare..

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Electronic Punk

We have four SANs here and are close to moving to it, but I have 24 other sites to manage and this was the best way.

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Sazar

There HAS to be a better way than that EP. But, if it works

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Electronic Punk

Well the best way would be to carefully wrap up all those NAS boxes and throw them in the sea, but there you go.

Ideally I would have DFS-r or was it n and actually keep all the files here and only backup here - but there you go.

Getting 40 meg broadband here soon, with 2 meg in each of our regions (some are on 64k we are on 4meg) so upgrades soon!

A 40 meg connection to a private military network is not cheap

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madmatt

Same stupid problem occurs when I attempt to backup to a folder located on the D: drive. I have called on a fellow network engineer and good friend to come over and look at it. Whatever is causing the problem is something I am not seeing. I will keep you guys posted.

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