Backup Exec 12.5 error message

[glum]

Hello.

I am running Backup Exec 12.5. It was just installed (by someone else) and I have tried to set up a backup job.
The backup job fails, and I have tried to reconfigure it and run as a test. When I try to run it as a  test, it says
"Capacity check status: failed" and I also notice that it says "Online append capacity: 0 MB".

I have set up the job such that it takes backup of all my VMware virtual machines through the Virtual Center server.
It finds all the machines, and that part seems to be fine. The consultant that installed it set up a sample job,
and I suspect that perhaps he set "Never overwrite" on that job. When I click on the media set that I have defined,
I see a bunch of files in the right-hand window.

I'm not sure how to proceed with this... any ideas?

[Colin_Weaver]

You don't say if you are using tape or disk based media

Also if you scroll the right hand windo containing the bunch of files you are referring to - you will see when the media can be appended to or overwritten which might help you understand what is going on...

[glum]

Sorry, I forgot to mention which media I am using.

This first job that I am setting up is a full backup to disk.

In that right column, it says:

Overwrite protection until: Overwritable
Appendable until: Not appendable (media full)

These files are quite small, so there should be plenty of space left.

[glum]

Basically the plan is the following:

1. Saturday evening I want to make a full backup of VMware virtual machines to disk.
2. Sunday evening I want to make a full backup of the disk to tapes.
3. Monday-Friday I want to make incremental backup of VMware virtual machines to disk.

The job  that I am trying to set up, is nr. 1 in the list.

The job fails rather quickly when I try to run a test, and in the disk-section of the log, I see the following:

Media online/nearline      : Yes
Overwrite or appendable    : Yes
Capacity check status      : Failed

Media set name             : Weekly backup to disk
Online append capacity     : 0.00 MB
Online overwrite capacity  : 536,576.00 MB
Total append capacity      : 0.00 MB
Total overwrite capacity   : 540,672.00 MB

Why does it say that the append capacity is 0 MB?

The media set that I have defined for this job has:

4 days overwrite protection (I set 4 days instead of a week in case it takes very long to run the backup job)
2 days append period (I set 2 days in case it takes a long time to run the backup job. Not sure if the counts as "append" though).

[RahulG]

As you mentioned the media properties says    --- Appendable until: Not appendable (media full)
That is why the append capcity show up as 0 MB because it does not have free space where it can append data ...

Also you can set up the joB using a policy and create a duplicate backup job template which would duplicate the data from the disk to tape as per the schedule you want .
so the poilcy would have 3 templates
1.  full backup
2. incremental backup
3. duplicate backup
if you want the incremental backup aslo to run on the tape so you can create the 1 more template for the duplicate backup

 

[glum]

This job is set to "overwrite", so I thought it would overwrite what was previously on the media.
Also, what's on the media is 276GB, but there should be several TB of free space.

I moved the data to "retired media" and deleted it there (since it's data I don't want anyway)... So hopefully that solves
the problem. I'm not advanced enough with BE to be using policies and templates yet. I was hoping that I could avoid it.

Thanks though, I will see if this helps.

[Colin_Weaver]

Don't backup the Backup to disk location via the file system when you write the data to tape this can cause problems if you ever have to DR your media server - it is stongly recommended that you use a duplicate job to do this - which is where the policies and templates stuff starts to come back into the equation as you can use policies to make a duplicate start as soon as the backup to disk job ends.