Backing up Backup Exec Server

[bklish]

Follow up to this post: http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/backing-backup-exec-server#comment-8828601

1. A good (and most recent) full backup of C: (which is usually where your OS gets installed) and the System State

Can someone explain why you need a full backup of C:?  I can deploy a new server in less than 15 minutes.  If I can just backup the system state and restore that to a newly deployed server I think it’s most efficient overall.  Is that a valid solution?

2.     A good (and most recent) backup of the Data and Catalogs folder (this contains your Backup Exec database and Catalogs)
Note: The Data and Catalogs folder must be backed up manually (i.e. Stop all BE services, copy - paste teh two folders)

Also, in reference to http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/how-protect-backup-exec-itself.  He mentions having a backup of BEDB.bak, but then says to also backup the entire Data folder.  The entire folder seems like the wrong idea.  I can’t backup the live database files in there unless I stop the services which seems less than ideal.  What about the other .bak files in that directory?  Should I just backup all the .bak files?

Also for the catalogs folder it seems you could leave the services running as long as you’re backing up with VSS.

Thanks in advance.

[CraigV · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I guess the OP is stating you need the C:\ drive in case there are installation files located elsewhere. That said I've recovered a few BE media servers without recovering the OS. My personal reason for this would be in case there was OS corruption that was already backed up to tape, I'd reinstall a server, and then spend hours restoring it to find it had the same issue all over.

The Data and Catalogs folders are always recommended. You use these to recover your server. I suppose you can get away with just BEDB.bak (which is created at 4am every morning), but without the Catalogs folder you need to recatalog every tape/B2D file you have.

These folders shouldn't be very big and would be what's required, along with maybe the System State. That said, I never backed up the System State either and never had an issue restoring a media server when I needed too.

Thanks!

[pkh]

If you just restore the system state, you might end up with an unbootable machine because backing up the system state does not backup the entire Windows directory and the Program Files directory.  When you update Windows or some other applications, the files are scattered amoungst these directories.

You backup the entire Data directory because in addition to the BEDB, there are job logs and other information that BE requires are in this directory.  If you really want to minimise your backup, then just backup the BEDB.BAK.  However, note that this file is the state of the BEDB at the time of the last database maintenance.

[bklish]

"However, note that this file is the state of the BEDB at the time of the last database maintenance."

Right, but that will always be the case even if you backup the entire \Data directory correct?  I mean you won't be able to restore the live SQL database files and transaction log that it's writing to throughout the day even if you were backing it up every 5 minutes.  You need an actual SQL backup or you need to shutdown services and then backup.  In our case the backup relies on the services so that's not a great option.  Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

It seems to me that the best option would be to select the entire \Data folder, but exclude the live database files.  Thoughts on that?

[CraigV]

You wouldn't need to exclude anything. BE has Active File Exclusion which will automatically exclude the SQL files. You can put the manual exclusions in if you want.

Ideally you want the SQL agent to backup and restore the BEDB while live, but recovering by restoring the bedb.bak file will work too.

Thanks!

[Colin_Weaver · Accepted solution]

Just for info as well as the BEDB.bak the data folder contains your job logs - now they might not be that important unless you want to be able to review the job logs and tapes used by other jobs easily after you have recovered the media server to facilitate the recovery of other servers.

Also with regards the BEDB.bak it can be useful to plan the following scenario:

Do all the backups of your production servers overnight

Change the bedb Mainteneance schedule so that it runs when your production server backups are not running (so during the day).

Plan to copy/backup the bedb.bak and the catalogs folder just after the maintenance of the BEDB would create a new BEDB.bak (and still when no other backup jobs are running) as then you get consistent data between the content of the BEDB and the catalogs.

Of course if you can back these up without using BE itself then you won't have to get BE working and the last media copy inventoried and catalogued before you can restore them - which can save a few steps and some time during the restore. If you back them up with BE then keep a manual record ourtisd of BE of the media that contains the bedb.bak and catalogs.

Finally to recover a bedb.bak into the BE install you use BEutility.exe (with the bedb.bak placed back in the data folder.)

[bklish]

"BE has Active File Exclusion which will automatically exclude the SQL files."

Ahhh...I did not realize that.  That's good to know.  Any thoughts as to why it was suggested to stop services before backing up those directories?  Seems it would work as long as you're using VSS-based backups.  I imagine it's just to keep a consistent state since Backup Exec would be modifying the very files it's backing up.  I guess you could use a Windows scheduled task to perform that if so.  Please confirm.

[CraigV]

It is suggested to do this in order to backup those files, but BE will only do so with the agent in place and the application stays up, or the flat-files with the application stopped and Active File Exclusion disabled.

AFE has to be disabled in order to backup those flat-files as it would exclude any files on its list.

The reason why you wouldn't have to stop the BE services would be:

1. bedb.bak gets created on a schedule every night and you can recover BE using this;

2. BE would exclude the SQL database and logs by default with AFE.

Thanks!

[bklish]

Thanks for the additional information.  Very much appreciated.