B2D2T Queries

[Steve_4]

Hi All,

I am running the latest update of Backup Exec 2014 on a windows 2012 R2 Server.

I have recently begun looking into configuring B2D2T Backups and have the following questions in regards to it:

1. When backing up to disk and duplicating to tape, does the duplicate come from the disk backups, or from the original server?
2. If I were to set the B2D2T job to backup straight after to the tape, would the verify for the first instance finish prior to moving on?
3. I would like to start taking differential backups of the exchange full. Would removing the full tape backup disrupt this? Or does it backup based on the catalogs? If it does not, would it be possible to make the differential backup the disk copy (Or would this cause issues due to the "Only manage disk backups within Backup Exec" rule).

Appreciate any advice.

Kind Regards,
Steven

[pkh]

1. from the disk backup set

2. yes

3. Differential backups are taken from the Exchange database itself, not from any backup sets.

[Steve_4]

Thanks for your prompt reply pkh,

So two more quick questions then:

1. So in order to restore the duplicated files on the tape, they would have to be restored to the disk and then transferred to the server? Or does BE handle everything and restore directly from the tape?

2. So how does the differential know what has changed since the last time a full back up was run? I say this because a differential failed at the verify stage last night saying that it could not find the previous backup tape.

Thanks,
Steven

[VJware]

1) Restores directly from tape.

2) For a differential backup to run, the corresponding full backup set (and its catalogs) must be present.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

1) Since you are restoring from an Exchange backup, BE will stage the tape backup set to disk before it will do the actual restore.  You need to ensure that you have sufficient disk space for this staging or duplicate the tape backup set to disk and doing the restore from the disk backup set.

2) It is a bit more complicated because you are doing an Exchange differential backup.  This requires the full backup set and the Exchange database.

[VJware]

Just adding to the first point -

Staging occurs only if you are performing a GRT restore from tapes, else not.

[Steve_4]

Hi Guys,

I will mark the answer now, although, pkh's first reply stating that duplicates are just backing the disk backup files to tape is incorrect. I did some testing after with this and found that the backups were coming from the original server again.

Thank you both for your help,
Steve