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Backup Exec CIFS Share Backup Issue
Hello Experts,
I am having a few teething problems with a couple backup jobs running on Backup Exec 2010. I have a NetApp filer presenting a few shares that I’m trying to take weekly full backups to USB disk attached to a media server for off-site storage. There are two jobs that run, one on filer 1 and the other on filer 2. What I cannot get figured out is why the jobs back up some of the shares but not all of them. For example, on backup job 1 on filer 1, the job backs up 3 of the 10 shares and on backup job 2 on filer 2, it backs up 1 of the 7 shares. The catch is, this is not consistent. Sometimes the jobs will backup more or less shares and on a rare occasion the job will complete. All shares are configured roughly the same and the Backup Exec logon account has access either via group membership or directly.
Things I’ve looked at to date are ensuring the job is running as the Logon account and that logon account (Domain Admin) has rights to all shares, both on the share and NTFS permissions. Tried using both filer’s hostnames and IPs. Added the filers as User-Defined Selections. There are a couple subfolders that are excluded which I’ve added to Universal Excludes. I’ve recreated the jobs after deleting the previous selection lists.
The media server is Windows 2008 R2 x64 which was a recent migration from Windows 2003 R2 x86 to accommodate backup of Exchange 2010 – needed the x64 OS.
Any advice, tips or tricks to get this running, without creating 17 individual jobs, would be great. Thanks for your help.
I am having a few teething problems with a couple backup jobs running on Backup Exec 2010. I have a NetApp filer presenting a few shares that I’m trying to take weekly full backups to USB disk attached to a media server for off-site storage. There are two jobs that run, one on filer 1 and the other on filer 2. What I cannot get figured out is why the jobs back up some of the shares but not all of them. For example, on backup job 1 on filer 1, the job backs up 3 of the 10 shares and on backup job 2 on filer 2, it backs up 1 of the 7 shares. The catch is, this is not consistent. Sometimes the jobs will backup more or less shares and on a rare occasion the job will complete. All shares are configured roughly the same and the Backup Exec logon account has access either via group membership or directly.
Things I’ve looked at to date are ensuring the job is running as the Logon account and that logon account (Domain Admin) has rights to all shares, both on the share and NTFS permissions. Tried using both filer’s hostnames and IPs. Added the filers as User-Defined Selections. There are a couple subfolders that are excluded which I’ve added to Universal Excludes. I’ve recreated the jobs after deleting the previous selection lists.
The media server is Windows 2008 R2 x64 which was a recent migration from Windows 2003 R2 x86 to accommodate backup of Exchange 2010 – needed the x64 OS.
Any advice, tips or tricks to get this running, without creating 17 individual jobs, would be great. Thanks for your help.
Paul Solovyovsky
Are you backing up Netapp via CIFS or NDMP? If you're doign CIFS I would recommend giving NDMP a try
ASKER
Backing up via CIFS. I don't have the equipment required for NDMP and I know backing up CIFS works, all be it with a little note from Backup Exec about not having an agent.
NDMP is only a license, you don't need special equipment. You can enable a trial license in backup exec.
Backup Exec will complain about an agent because it thinks it's a windows server when backin up via CIFS and will look for a remote agent which doesn't exist.
Backup Exec will complain about an agent because it thinks it's a windows server when backin up via CIFS and will look for a remote agent which doesn't exist.
ASKER
I was under the impression that a SCSI or FC tape device was required for NDMP. The same backup selections were working under CIFS on the Windows 2003 box. I just trying to pinpoint what's different on the 2008 box.
That is incorrect, you can backup ndmp via network without any issues. It could be a windows 2008 firewall issue, disable and try again.
ASKER
The firewall is disabled. Frustrating as this was working well on the 2003 box. I would like to avoid spending the cash on a license for something I know will work without. Any ideas, without NDMP, that I'm might be missing?
Thanks
Thanks
Symantec does not certify NetApp devices with Backup Exec for Windows. You may be able to get it to work (as you did on an earlier config), but many people find it's unreliable at best.
Here's an article on the Symantec website on the subject that may be of some help:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH33946
(Just an afterthought: do you want your backups to rely on an unsupported configuration? Do you consider your data important enough to spend a little money to get reliable backups ?)
NDMP add-on is fully supported For Backup Exec and Netapp. We are using it at most of our customers to backup CIFS with no issues other then making sure that the history tab is enabled so you can perform granular restores. The URL below is for BE 11 but is still fully supported through 12 and 2010
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH48957
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH48957
I agree with paulsolov that you should use NDMP. It does have it's limitations, but it's efficient an reliable. It is the only supported configuration in your case.
BTW: the best available solution for backup of Netapp filers is ... another Netapp filer (using snapvault). Of course this doesn't come cheap.
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ASKER
So I spent some time and got NDMP running to disk for the filer. I'm still working through a few issues but have had a completed test Full, Incremental and retore jobs done. Will have the real test this weekend. I was seeing throughput speed almost triple from my CIFS backup. Thanks all for pushing me in this direction.
ASKER
Still baffled as to why CIFS backup didn't work but the work around is a good solution.
Please test granular restore. If history checkbox is not checked you can only restore the whole volume. Test, test, test...
ASKER
I've done a few now and all seems to be working as expected. Do you knwo why the restore byte count is significantly larger than the file restored? For example I restored a 32K file and the restore job had a byte count of just over 1GB. Something to do with volume information?
Not sure but backing up un deduplicates the data, maybe this has something to do with this.