AppAssure Replication : Replay Version 4.7

Do you use AppAssure's (Now owned by Dell) Replay 4.7 product for backing up and replicating your data offsite?

Are you having trouble replicating information from a client site to another replay core on or offsite?  

Did you perform a copy/consume and now it just hangs and looks at you?  

If yes, I believe this article will help you.

This seems to be especially problematic with Domain Controllers, and from what we can tell, it definitely happens when you are running Win Server 2008 R2 w/SP1.

Basically you setup the replication like you are supposed to, but when you run it, you get "Determining files to replicate" or "Locating Missing Files" neither of which ever go anywhere, they don't error out, but they never begin the process either.

So, what to do ?  Here you go... (This has been tested and worked each time 6 tests in all, 12 servers tested). First, you have to set up your replication and then let it hang and then apply the fix.


THE SETUP...

1.) Setup replication at the source core, when doing this, make sure you select the option to pause the replication until after your copy/consume is complete.

2.) Take external hard drive to the client site, connect to computer on the network, share the drive with full permissions for everyone, domain admins, domain users and authenticated users.

3.) Run the copy portion of the copy/consume process using external drive as the  "Copy To" point via the network share.

4.) Bring the drive to your target Replay core, connect the drive as needed so that the data is available to the target Replay core.

5.) Run the consume portion of the copy and consume process.

6.) Restart core services on both ends

7.) Resume the replication at the source (it was on suspend due to the copy/consume as mentioned in step 1).

8.) The server begins the replication process, and hangs.

The target server hangs there with a "Determining files to replicate message" that will sit there forever. Nothing ever happens.

THE FIX :

1.) Suspend replication on the source.

2.) Shutdown core and agent at the source.

3.) Shutdown core at the target (our datacenter in our case)

4.) On the core, Move (to a folder for temporary storage) or Delete all the .a32 files from the Repl folder [ Typically this is found in Drive:\\tevorepository\ser ver identification\Repl]  

Now move all the other files that came over in the copy/consume to the repl folder.  Move them to the "root" folder for that server (up one level, this should be the folder that is the server ID ).

Do this for each server you are trying to replicate.
 
5.) Once step 4 is completed for all servers, Start the target core (wait a full 3 - 5 minutes for everything to get up and synch'd

6.) Start the core on the source, let it come up

7.) Start the agent on the source, let it come up

8.) Resume replication on the source,

It might take up to 30 minutes for things to index and get rolling, but...

That should do it.

This method was tested on all of the systems we needed to replicate (6 different clients, 12 servers total) and it worked EVERY TIME.