BE 2012: How do I delete a job from the backup stage?

[Artegic]

I have Backup Exec 2012 SP3 running on Windows Server 2008 R2 backing up a Microsoft Exchange 2007 server on a D2D2T backup plan with weekly full and daily incremental backups to deduplication store and linked copy jobs to a LTO tape library. I also configured a second full backup job in the first stage ("Backup") with a separate standalone LTO drive as destination storage for offsite backups.

In the meantime I learned why that wasn't such a bright idea (see https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/incremental-backup-based-wrong-full-backup), so I'd like to replace the direct full backup to LTO in the first stage by a copy from the most recent full backup in the second stage. But I cannot find a way to do that. More specifically, I cannot get rid of the monthly full backup in the first stage. AFAICS there's neither a way to delete anything from the first stage, nor to move it from first to second stage.

Suggestions?

aTdHvAaNnKcSe,
Tilman

[Artegic]

For lack of a better idea, I renamed the unwanted monthly first stage job entry to "Deleteme" and set its starting time to 2099-01-01 and its cycle to every 99 years. That didn't work too well:

• After I saved the new settings, Backup Exec set the job status of the "Deleteme" entry to "on hold". All other entries for the server still showed as "planned", but nevertheless Backup Exec did not start the daily backup for that server at the scheduled time.
• When I removed the "on hold" setting on the "Deleteme" entry the daily backup started immediately, but at the same time the "Deleteme" job started emitting warnings that its starting time had been exceeded at a pace of one every five seconds. So I put it on hold again. The daily backup continued running and even the linked copy job to tape was started correctly.
• The daily backup emitted an error I never experienced before: "V-79-57344-759 - The process cannot be completed.  Error opening Exchange database file:  '-501 The log file is corrupt. '
• The copy job just hung after writing 7.8 GB to tape, with the number of bytes not changing anymore and the speed continuously decreasing, until after an hour I aborted it.

So obviously that's not the way to do it.

Other ideas?

[Artegic]

One of the mysteries is solved: Backup Exec had silently corrected the date of first execution from 2099-01-01 which I had set, to the obviously much more plausible 1970-01-01. When I cleared the on hold flag, it noticed that the job was long past its latest start time, warned me, and rescheduled the job one day later, on 1970-01-02. Then it noticed that the job was long past its latest start time, warned me, and rescheduled the job one day later, on 1970-01-03. Then ... and so on, ad nauseam.

I have now set the date of first execution of the "Deleteme" job to 2034-01-01 instead, verified that Backup Exec did not "correct" it for me again, and the job appears now safely disabled. The V-79-57344-759 error disappeared after I ran a full backup manually. The copy-to-tape job also ran fine after that.

So the only remaining issue is a job labelled "Deleteme" and scheduled never to run within the lifetime of that installation, still sitting in my list of jobs. Admittedly a cosmetic issue, but still annoying.

[Artegic]

For illustration, here's a screenshot of one of the backup jobs in question.

The entry I would like to get rid of is the first one in the Backup stage, labeled "Deleteme" and planned every 20 years, starting (not visible) at 2034-01-01.

Note how the entries of the Kopie (Copy) stage have an X icon in the top right corner allowing to delete them, but the entries of the Backup stage don't.

[Artegic]

Anyone?

[Artegic]

I think I made some progress playing around with the Backup Exec CLI. The Get-BEBackupDefinition command shows entries like:

Name                              : VENUS - System Backup
SelectionSummary                  : VENUS.artegic.local (Partial), MICROSOFT##SSEE (Excluded),
                                    O: (Excluded)
SimplifiedDisasterRecoveryEnabled : True
InitialFullBackup                 : Deleteme
AdditionalBackups                 : {wöchentlich, täglich}
Verifies                          : {}
DuplicateStages                   : {Band - täglich, Band - wöchentlich, monatlich}
SimultaneousConvertToVirtualStage :
ConvertBackupToVirtualStages      : {}

So apparently one of the backup tasks is more equal than the others: the "initial full" backup. True to Murphy's Law it's precisely the one I'd like to get rid of.

Question 1: Is there a way to promote one of the "additional" backups to "initial full"?

Question 2: Is there a way to delete one of the "additional" backups?

If the answer to Question 1 is "no" but the answer to Question 2 is "yes", I might just modify the "Deleteme" task's parameters to those of the "weekly" task and delete the latter one instead.

aTdHvAaNnKcSe
Tilman

[William_Donigan · Accepted solution]

Hello Tilman,

Unfortunately there is no way to promote a secondary backup task to the primary task in Backup Exec 2012. Your workaround would be to modify the primary task with the settings of the secondary task and remove the secondary task. After that is complete; verify/ modify the duplicate stages accordingly to the new settings of the primary full task or recreate the backup job.

As for the Backup Exec CLI question I am not versed enough with it to give you a pertinent answer.

[Artegic]

In the course of the last few months I had to recreate almost all affected backup tasks for various reasons. The last remaining one still sporting a "Deleteme" task has now hurt my eyes for too long and I have recreated it too just to get rid of that.

The question of whether an "AdditionalBackup" can be deleted via the CLI remains open but I'm no longer interested in it, so I'm marking this as solved.