Hi all,
I encountered a frustrating problem in the past few days.
After many colourful adjectives, alcoholic coffees, and random displays of primitive aggression, I am happy to announce that I have found a solution, and would like to share it with you.
Please note that, as with anything unofficial, this is a "use at your own risk" solution.
Environment and Setup:
1x Backup Exec 2012 server, fully patched SP1a, running as a Central Admin Server (Referred to as the CAS from hereon)
1x Backup Exec 2012 server, fully patched SP1a, running as a Managed Server using the Centrally Managed Backup Exec Server Mode and the Unrestricted Access To Catalogs and Backup Sets For Restore mode. (This server will be referred to as the MMS from hereon)
The CAS was installed in a non-default path:
D:\Backup Exec
The MMS was push-installed from the CAS, to the BE default path:
C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec
Note:
The path difference between the two servers is supported, and has always been so in previous Backup Exec versions.
It even lets you change the path during the push install of a new managed server.
The CAS and MMS have shared access to a single tape library using the Shared Storage Option (SSO) that comes with the Enterprise Server Option license.
Load balanced backup and restore jobs work fine; the two servers happily share/queue the limited tape drive resources.
Note:
You can still encounter the problem discussed below, even with other storage device types, shared or non-shared.
Problem encountered:
Normally, after every backup or restore job - successful or failed - you could right click on a job inside the "Job History" list, click "View Job Log", and be presented with the job log for a particular job.
However, I found out that some jobs wouldn't let me select the "View Job Log" option. This option was simply "greyed out".
I was not allowed to read the job logs for some jobs.
Upon inspection and after some tests, it was clear that only the jobs that are delegated to the MMS have this problem.
(I.e., Data written to the storage device via the MMS server, or read from the storage device via the MMS server. The "storage device" here being my tape library.)
The jobs that are delegated to the CAS don't have this problem; the right click option is not "greyed out" and I can view their job logs without problems.
Solution / Workaround / Unofficial Fix:
Log on to the MMS server locally.
Inspect the "Job Log Path" attribute via:
Top left BE Button > Configuration and Settings > Backup Exec Settings > Job Logs > Job Log Path
(You will notice you can't change its path value.)
Anyway, upon inspecting it, I noticed that it is using the path that the Central Admin Server is using!
In my case, it is showing:
D:\Backup Exec\Data
But then, my MMS doesn't use that installatoin path, it uses:
C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec
Which means its job logs directory should be:
C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data
I figured that it doesn't let me change the path here, so I fired up BEUtility.exe. (Remember I am doing this on the MMS, not on the CAS)
I clicked the option "Set Job Log and Catalog Location", then I changed the "Job Log Location" to:
\\<MMS hostname>\C$\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data
(Yes, you have to use the UNC path format)
It.......... didn't work. An error tells me that it couldn't find the folder D:\Backup Exec\Data, which makes sense because this is the path used by the CAS, not the MMS.
So I created this empty folder on the D: drive (Lucky me that my MMS server has a D: drive...), tried the "Job Log Location" change again, and it finished without errors.
Effectively Backup Exec was tricked into thinking that it moved the job logs from D:\Backup Exec\Data to C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data.
Next, I deleted the D:\Backup Exec\Data folders on the MMS because they are no longer needed.
Back on the CAS, I delegated some jobs to the MMS, jobs finished, and the "View Job Log" right click option is now working again on these new jobs.
Thoughts:
I'm pretty sure this is a programming mistake. A minor one though; I hope this will be patched soon.
RLeon
