BE 2010 R2, create a job to span two disks?

[rslygh]

Hello, I'm running BE 2010 R2 on a Windows Server 2003 R2 install, which is running within VMWare ESXi 4. I have ~3.5TB that I backup on a weekly basis using and iSCSI SAN setup connected to the VMWare server. Because of Windows limitations I am restricted to a maximum of 2TB drives on the Windows server so I've been stuck creating 2TB chunks in my SAN and then merging them together as dynamic disks while using spanned or striped volumes. This has been problematic because VMWare doesn't seem to like Windows dynamic disks, so I'm trying to find to avoid dynamic disks while still backing up my entire dataset. What I'm wondering is whether I can somehow tell BE 2010 R2 to write to the two individual 2TB disks while keeping them as standalone disks. For example, if I have drives E and F each with 2TB of free space (4TB total) and create a backup-to-disk folder on each drive (FullDrive1 and FullDrive2), can I get BE 2010 to use both B2D folders to write backup data to so the entire 3.5TB can be backed up between those two folders? Or can you only write to one backup-to-disk folder per job? Or to say it another way, can I have two 2TB disks available to the BE Server and use them to write a single 3.5TB backup job to so it automatically span both drives while leaving them as two individual disks? It sounds like a device pooling issue, but I'm not sure if that's what I'm looking for because from what I've been able to find that appears to be geared more towards tape drives rather than B2D. I setup my next full backup to write to a device pool containing FullDrive1 and FullDrive2, but I'm hoping I'll have an answer to whether that will work or not before the job triggers this coming Friday. Thanks in advance for your assistance

[AmolB]

BE cannot span jobs over multiple B2D's.

Refer to http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH17455

[rslygh]

Thanks for the quick reply, even if it wasn't what I was hoping to hear. Guess I need to migrate away from running BE 2010 in a VMWare environment.

[Ken_Putnam]

You could add a thread to the Ideas area suggesting this functionality.  If enough folks give it a "Thumbs Up" it may be added to a future release

[rslygh]

Thanks for the idea. I created a post in the Ideas area in case anyone else is interested in getting this added to BE. https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/ideas/allow-backup-disk-cascaded-drive-pools

[teiva-boy]

If " VMWare doesn't seem to like Windows dynamic disks..."

How is Symantec going to fix this?  

I think more work needs to be done via support or more research to identify if this is a vStorage limitation (Vmware) or a BackupExec limitation (B2D issues over 2TB)

[pkh]

@rslygh - The document quoted by Amolzerocool is not relevant to your situation because cascaded drive prools are removed in BE 2010.

BE can span disk, if you activate the low disk threshold property of the B2D folder.  See below

After you have created your B2D folders on your volumes,  you must create a device pool and put them into it.  Your job must target this drive pool and not the individual folders.  Make sure that all your volumes are on-line when the job starts,  BE will write to the first available B2D folder.  Once the low disk threshold limit is reached, it will continue on the next available B2D folder in the pool.

[Colin_Weaver]

However BE can't span disks like PKH has commented if you are doing GRT based AVVI backups as those are written down as single VMDK files in an IMG folder not as BKF files that can span.

[rslygh]

I'm not looking for Symantec to fix VMWare's issue with dynamic disks. What I'm asking looking for is a solution through Backup Exec so I can avoid needing to use dynamic disks altogether, which means allowing backup jobs to span across B2D folders. I only explained my situation since I'm running things in VMWare, but it would be no different if I had a standalone server with 8 TB of space, and wanted to run my backups to it. Windows itself is limited to only 2TB disks so I could create four 2TB drives, but would still be stuck relying on Windows dynamic disks in order to do any backing up that would need more than 2TB unless Symantec allowed spanning B2D folders. From my experience Windows dynamic disks are something to avoid altogether if you can, whether you're using VMWare or not.

[rslygh]

Thanks pkh. This is what I was hoping to find. I have my job setup this way right now with a device pool and my B2D disks, but didn't have the low disk threshold limit set. The article Amolzerocool sure made it look like I wasn't going to be able to do this, and it said it covered BE 2010 as well, but if this works that'll be great. I'll give it a try and I'll update my question so your response is the answer if it's a success.

[rslygh]

Thanks Colin, but luckily I'm not so I shouldn't run into this issue. Good to know for the future though.

[CraigV]

Hi there,

Can you remove the solution from the post, and give it to the poster that helps you? It's going to give a false positive to others looking for the correct solution!

Thanks,

Craig