1 Week Backup plan - 11d.

[ssalter]

hi, new to Backup Exec but after trying some cheap products I really appreciate  a lot of what it has to offer. I've been trying to study the Admin manual but I'm confused on a couple points.

1)
 3 Windows 2003 servers. Not sure why Backup Exec needs agents on those servers. One of them never did appear on the main server I have Backup Exec on. On that specific machine it shows it is up and running (runs on login) and is publishing and shows the main server but it doesn't appear in my Windows Servers list.  We can't use mapped drives?

2)
First, we have two LaCie 2.5T drives we use for data storage. One device holds our User directories, Lab directories, and miscellany. The other device is intended for backups. Call em Disk1 and Disk2.

The devices have 5 500gb drives that I have configured as JBOD. This way I can have spare drives and use those to have an offsite backup, or whatever.

I created a device named "Lab Full" that points to Disk2/Drive 1. This is 400gb of data to be backed up. I only want to do a full backup once a week with daily incremental backups and 'replace' the full backup each week. I make the "Maximum number of backup sets per backup-to-disk file option as 1. I leave everything else alone because it looks ok to me! :)

The Media Set only has one choice "Keep Data Infinitely - Do Not Allow Overwrite".  I'm not sure why this except possibly I'm still using the trial version of 11d. There is also a radio button below in the "When the Job begins" that says Overwrite Media. Voila, perhaps that is what I need to activate. I set teh source and very little else because I'm doing a simple backup. Oh, I do want to backup open files so I check the Advanced Open File Option and 'Automatically select open file technology".

This job runs. I'm amazed how quickly backup exec does the job. I test a recovery and it works perfect. I'm happy.

Incremental backups work great well after setting up device (another jbod drive on Disk2) and job.

Week 2 comes up and an additional backup set is being made on the device and we run out of room.  Ok, now I'm not so happy.  What am I doing wrong?

Hopefully, I gave enough info here to give someone a chance to respond.

My other backup plans are similar but they deal with less data and I want to keep 2 full backups instead of 1.

Thanks,
Steve

[ssalter]

Fiddled with various settings on some test backup jobs and no joy. Anyone have a clue here?  thanks.

[Ben_L_]

1. You need the remote agent so that Backup Exec can backup the system files and permissions from everything on the system.  If the remote agent is publishing to the Backup Exec server check to see if it's listed under the Favorite Resources.

2. You need to create a media set with a 5 or 6 day overwrite protection period.  You can create your own media set by right clicking on "Media Sets" then selecting New Media Set.  Set the jobs to use this media set instead of the default media set you are currently using.

[ssalter]

Thank you! If that gives me the 1 week or 2 week backup set scenario I need, we'll definitely put in an order for Backup Exec.  I suppose that right click operation is somewhere in the manual but with 1600+ pages, I didn't uncover it yet. Appreciate it.