After SP3, Backup job need two tapes to complete

[rogergarcia]

Hello everybody.

i have 5 servers using BE 2010 R3 SP2, after upgrade SP3, two of that server need two tapes to complete a job, that with SP2 only need one tape.

The tape drive is a LTO 2, and the tapes are of 400 GB, the size of the Backup Job is 260/270 GB in one server and 330/340 GB in the other one.

i think that this SP3 make several changes that affect compress of the data, i dont know.

Somebody has been similar issues?

I´m thinking go back to SP2 in that servers.

[lmosla]

Hello rogergarcia,

I recommend logging a support case for this issue so that this can be debugged and excalated appropriately.

[Larry_Fine]

LTO2 tapes hold 200 GB native.  Manufacturers advertise 400 GB compressed, assuming 2:1 compression ratio, which is not really typical.

If you were getting 590 GB to fit on one LTO2 tape, you had very good compression.  The Compression ratio is mostly determined by the source/type of data that you have.  The compression ratio when using hardware compression (in the tape drive) is NOT conptrolled by Backup Exec.

It is possible that by coincidence your data has expanded/changed such that it no longer fits on one tape and that also happened to be about the time you installed SP3.

It is also possible that something got changed during your SP3 upgrade such that you are not getting any compression now.

This should get you started for torubleshooting:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH50960

[CraigV]

...so Problem Server 1 backing up 260/270GB now uses 2 tapes, and Problem Server 2 backing up 330/340GB also uses 2 tapes? Or do both servers get backed in the same job?

Are your 5 servers all running individual copies of Backup Exec, or are these remote servers with 1 media server?

Thanks!

[Michael_Nagel]

Is this a hyper-v server by chance? 

I installed SP3 on my hyper-v servers and the size of my backups nearly doubled.  After several hours on the phone trying to explain the problem I was told to exclude the .vhd files from the backup of my drive D:.  I never had to exlude them before!  While it's not a big deal, every time you add a new virtual machine or disk to a virtual virtual machine you now have to remember to exclude the .vhd file for the backup of the drive the .vhd file is on.  And what happens when you move machines around for load balancing or maintenance.  How is this an improvement.

After I refused to take a workaround as a solution to the problem and wanted to escalate it as a bug. I was told to remove and reinstall the hyper-v agent.  We'll see what happens tonight.

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After reinstalling the hyper-v agent, the backup still include two copies of each .vhd file.