Backup Exec 2012 Not Backing Up What It Says It's Backing up (Exchange)

[Pawelk]

Hello,

My support contract expired in April of this year and since I missed the renewal period for a product that has been giving me constant headaches I have to pay Symantec $1,500 before they will even talk to me. So I'm hoping I can get some help on the forums while I wait for the budget to buy new backup software.

I have a SBS 2011 server with Backup Exec 2012 SBS. I have all the latest updates installed on the server all the way up to SP4.

I am trying to verify my disaster recovery plan so I created a virtual machine with a new SBS 2011 install and Backup Exec 2012 with again all the updates, all the way up to SP4.

On the virtual test machine backup Exec runs perfectly fine, and I am able to plug in our external backup drive (we backup to rotating external drives) and Backup Exec detects it perfectly fine. The issue is when I go to restore exchange and other items. 

This backup drive had a full backup (not incremental) run on 10/29/14. I have a Job Log file that says the job ran at this time and it was successful. Great!

So I inventory and catalog the drive on the virtual server that I am using as my test bench. I go to restore exchange and the only backup it has is from 10/20/14 and it only has only one mailbox database and the public folder database, we have 3 other databases that are included in the backup but they are completely missing.

Does anyone know what the issue might be? My apologies if there is any information that I should include which I'm, but I'm not sure what is relevant here. The Databases are selected in the backup, the job log says everything was fine, and the job is set to full (although I have another incremental job that runs to a NAS drive, I assume that shouldn't affect anything, but that assumption could be wrong). 

Thanks.

[lmosla]

hi  try changing/ expanding the date range selection.

[Pawelk]

The date range was set from 10/13/14 to 11/3/14.

Thanks

[Colin_Weaver]

If you did truely backup all 3 databases then the backup job log on the original server should be able to confirm that - have you actually checked this as it may be that for whatever reason you did not backup what you thought you did.

[Pawelk]

Here is the Job Log that clearly states they were backed up successfully.

All I did was rename our company name to XYZ throughout the file.

As it says in the log file it used the device "4TB - 1" which is one of the external drives we use. It says it backed up all the databases including XYZ01, XYZ02, and XYZ03. Yet when I inventory and catalog this drive on the test VM the only databases available to me are The one public folder database and the "Mailbox Database 2011112613"

Is there any thing else I need to post (screenshots, videos, etc) to prove that Backup Exec claimed this backup took place (along with several others) yet those backups are no where to be found when hooked up to the recovery machine?

[pkh]

How exactly is the external drive connected to your virtual test machine? Not all configuration is supported

[Pawelk]

This one is plugged directly in to the USB port of the server which is an ESXi 5.1 host. The drive is passed through VMware to the SBS2011 guest.

[Pawelk]

Today I tested our NAS drive, same thing. Not backing up, yet log file says it's been backed up. This is absolutely insane. My last backup was 10/20/14 of exchange and it only backed up 1/10th of our store.

Why would anyone rely on this software?

I am going to recreate the job now, run it, and see if they actually show up.

[Pawelk]

Recreating the job, with identical settings, now seems to be working. Funny enough I didn't do an inventory/catalog operation in this case. Is that no longer needed?

Testing backups monthly is part of our plan, sounds like testing them weekly at minimum will be a requirement until I can get new backup software. Veeam seems to be looking well, and their enterprise license is cheaper than what Symantec quoted me just to renew our maintenance contract.

[Colin_Weaver]

Just for info we do not officially test any form of hardware pass through into a VM for backup target/storage devices, this statement includes not testing USB attached disks and SCSI or Fiber Chanmnel attached tape drives/libraries

For this reason best / recommended practice if that media servers should be physical servers in  order to have fully supported harwdare access. Note we do support vitualized media servers but there are limitations (there is also one configuration that only applies ONLY to virtual media servers - HotAdd Transport)

Now we know that pass through tape drives give all sorts of seemingly random problems. However we are not actually aware of any confirmed issues with the passthrough of USB attached disks and suspect that their use may be more common than we are aware. It is therefore possible that your issue has nothing to do with your passthrough configuration, however should you continue to experience the problem then I would suggest you do some tests with a Backup to disk storage target that is held inside a VMDK and not on passthrough. If this issue still occurs with this config then please log a formal support case.

[Pawelk]

And not working again. Only one job is available to me and it's from 11/4/14. The backup ran last night to this drive as well as over the weekend and a couple times last week.

Absolutely absurd. Job log says the job ran fine. The job runs daily (drive is swapped every other day) and the job is set so data is kept for a week. Yet I only have one copy over a week old.

Edit: Did another inventory and catalog on the drive and now I have 3 backup sets on some datastores, 4 on some others, and 2 on another. All datastores get backed up at the same time, yet for some reason I have the backup from yesterday for most datastores, but for one of them I only have the backup from the day before (11/10).

This makes no sense. I can't log a formal support case as has been recommended as I don't have a support contract, and I'm not about to pay for this software again. The excuse it doesn't work with VM passthrough doesn't pass the smell test, all other data that isn't exchange backs up fine.