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SMI's avatar
SMI
Level 3
15 years ago

Holiday Schedule Stopping Backups in Backup Exec 12 ver 1364?

Each time there is a holiday, it seems it takes a week before I get a good backup again. This time, coincidentally, our backup went to requiring two tapes rather than one. I have cleaned up the server (or so I thought) so It would require only one tape. However, where our largest  single  tape before held 92,912,314,309 bytes, I can now only write 70-73,000,000,000 bytes before requiring a second tape. Additionally, the backup just seems to take longer to write, although that could be because I need to finish the backup during the day with users on.

There are a couple of hot fixes that will not install, and I don't know if that is part of the problem. They are 336064, 340028, and 340354.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I have had only one good backup since Memorial Day.
12.x and Earlier
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  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    15 years ago
    Check your job log and look at the compression ratio.  If as you said, the files are not changed then the compression ratio should remain the same.

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  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    15 years ago

    I think what happened is that the type of files that you are backing up has cnanged resulting in in poorer compression, thus less data on the tape.  For example, jpegs and movies compress poorly.  Installing hotfixes will not fix this kind of problems.  You got tackle this from the data standpoint.

    With the user on, your backup job will definitely take longer.  There are a lot more contention for resources, network bandwidth, CPU cycles, etc.

  • SMI's avatar
    SMI
    Level 3
    15 years ago
    PKH,

    I wish the data file types had changed, but that is not the case. Most of the files haven't changed in a long time, in many cases years! I agree the backup will take longer with users on, and that is generally expected. In the most recent case, the backup was still running at 4:30 in the afternoon, and even in the past with users on, the backup would finish around noon. 

    Today I will long erase our tapes to see if that helps. I have ordered a couple new tapes as well, to see if the tapes are just old and therefore contain a lot of bad blocks. It is just odd that this all coincides with the holiday, which has always messed up backups.
  • pkh's avatar
    pkh
    Moderator
    15 years ago
    Check your job log and look at the compression ratio.  If as you said, the files are not changed then the compression ratio should remain the same.
  • SMI's avatar
    SMI
    Level 3
    15 years ago
    PKH,

    I contacted Symantec before receiving your post. You are dead on! My compression ratio is now 1:1. I now need to get in touch with HP to see about diagnostics, to see if it is a physical issue or software issue.

    Thanks for leading me in the right direction.

    SMI