Backup Exec 12 - Backup job run for too long, but eventually complete.

[chris1]

Hello,

we have a client who uses Backup Exec v.12 with a 4 month old SCSI HP DAT 72 tape drive. We have a daily backup that runs Monday to Friday and backs up generic data and a few accounting databases. The total amount of data on tape is 12.5GB.

The problem I'm having is the backup runs at its scheduled time of 11:00pm, but completes 35 hours later. In the server system logs there are entries that list “Please Insert overwritable media" when in fact there is overwritable media in the drive and the job completes. There are not other warnings or errors.

Here's some background into and troubleshooting I've done. I apologize for the long winded description.

- Ran a cleaning cartridge through the drive 5 times and tried different media - Same issue
- Used HP LTT and performed DDS drive assessment tests, compression tests, read/write, and media analyses test - No issues found. In fact the media test gets about 6.5MB/s, which according to HP and the drive specs is good.

- I've had HP tech drive support work for multiple hours on this issue and they are confident that its not the drive or media.  As we are using an HP sever, according to HP there is known bug in the server HP System Management software that affects the tape drive performance. The HP tech performed a regedit to apply this fix and rebooted the server. The next two days after the reboot the backup job as normal and completed less than 2 hours for 12.5 GB of data. Come the following week the backups jobs are now back to where they were taking between 30 - 40 hours to complete and reporting the same overwritable media error.

Any thoughts would be appreciated?


Server hardware & software specs: ( not sure if it's important are not)

HP ML350 G5 - Intel xeon E5335 2Ghz, 3 GB RAM
OS: Win2K3 R2 Standard SP2
HP DAT72 SCSI tape drive
Symantec backup Exec 12 for Windows

[rahuls]

Hello Chris

Looks like you facing some intermittent issue regarding slow throughput .
Quick summary - Backing up data approx of 13GB which normally takes around 2 hours but now the same job completes in about 35 hours
Well ... here are few technotes which you may find helpful for your problem,
http://support.veritas.com/docs/285756

http://support.veritas.com/docs/299457

http://support.veritas.com/docs/231488

http://support.veritas.com/docs/255501

Let me know if that helps....

Thanks & Regards
Rahul S
Symantec

[Ken_Putnam]

Does the backup start right away, and just run Ultra slow, or does it actually pause and then start at some later time, automagically?

almost sounds like the tape  that is mounted are not overwriteable, and after a day or two, do become writeable

When you mount your tape, do an inventory.  Does the tape show up in BLUE (Overwriteable) or BLACK (Protected)

[chris1]

Sorry for the delayed response.


Thanks for the helpful support links.  I Will be passing them on to our other techs that I work with. 

What I'd found is that the servers SAS drivers were heavily fragmented.  Once performing a defrag on the drives my backups haven't failed since and are now achieving rates up to 250MB.

Thanks again for your help.  Issue appears to be resolved.

Chris