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Backup Exec 2012 single backup for Multiple Servers.

santoshpawar
Level 4

Hello,

 

I have multiple windows server.  I am using backupexec version 2012.  I need to backup my all server in single backup job like my previous backup exec version 2010.

 

But In backup exec 2012 i am not able to create common backup job for my all servers.  I don't want to create seprate backup job for each my server.

Can anyone please tell me how to configure one single backup job who can take backup of my multiple servers????

 

 

Thanks ,

Santosh Pawar

[Symantec Veritas Operations]

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

SuperBrain
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Like i mentioned above, it will create individual (seperate) jobs with same settings for each server in the Group. 

These jobs can later be modified to change the selections/settings/devices/schecdules/etc as required byt the backup admin.

See http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH189098 for more info on Server Groups.

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47 REPLIES 47

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

With BE 2012, you cannot backup more than 1 server with a single job.  There is no way around this.

GAD_Tech
Level 3

I have the same problem as Santosh. Version 2010 did it all in one job. When I upgraded to 2012 that stopped working. I thought maybe by grouping the servers they could be backed up as one job, but apparently a job is still created for every server in the group.

In fact, with 2012 I'm even having trouble getting two jobs on the same media. Is there no way to tell it to backup one server first and then append the second server on the same media as soon as the first job ends?

 

GLWSchwarz
Level 3

The actual BE2012 is not designed that way, it's optimised for targetting multiple jobs to backup-to-disk, to shorten the backup window, but...

Symantec is working on capabilites you asked for, like linked backups targetting the same tape-media-set, but this will take some time.

SuperBrain
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Santosh,

It is true that you cannot create a job with multiple servers resources selected.

one server per backup job. thats how it work in Backup Exec 2012.

 

If you are worried about the time it may take for job creation (considering you have multiple servers in your environment), you can try using the "Groups" feature in Backup Exec.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH189098 - Using Server Groups in Backup Exec 2012.

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO74306 - Backing up server groups.

 

*** Important ***

This option will allow you to:

  1. Create a Group of all servers which you want to backup using Backup Exec 2012.
  2. Using the Group, you can create individual jobs for all selected servers at once (hence saving time and efforts to create each job one by one)
  3. Once all the jobs are created (i.e. one job per server), you can then modify each job as required (i.e. Device/Settings/Schedules/etc).

 

Hopest
Level 3

Technically you can backup multiple servers by putting the servers you would like to backup into a group and then by right clicking on the group you point to Backup - backup to tape and then this will open a new job with the server's listed on the right.

The only thing with this is that you can not edit the selections for each individual server, you have to backup the everything.

If you need to edit the selection for each server than i'm afraid you are stuck with how 2012 is built and have to create a new job for each.

Thanks

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

That still creates multiple jobs and the tape will rewind and fast forward between them (extra wear and tear in the mechanism)

SuperBrain
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Like i mentioned above, it will create individual (seperate) jobs with same settings for each server in the Group. 

These jobs can later be modified to change the selections/settings/devices/schecdules/etc as required byt the backup admin.

See http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH189098 for more info on Server Groups.

Sush---
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

You may also try the solution provided in this technote:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH189306 : How to back up multiple servers to a single series of tapes in Backup Exec 2012

Thanks,

-Sush...

Elizabeth_Teffn
Level 4
Employee

Hello!

I'm a usability engineer for Backup Exec and we have heard about this issue from many users through many avenues and we are listening.

Currently we are working on a new workflow to accomplish the 1 job with multiple servers issue. It's in the mock-up stage and we are looking for users to give us feedback.

If you are interested in participating in a usability session, please check out the sessions I have for next week. These are remote session via WebEx and about an hour long.

If you have any questions about this, feel free to leave a comment here - or send me an email directly.

Regards,

Elizabeth 

ForemanNZ
Level 4

The Backup Exec 2010 job tree option was just what I needed - I have a combination of physical and virtual servers, and at the moment I have 21 backup jobs + 11 incrementals + duplications, whereas previously I had 2.  We paid maintenance on our existing licencing to give us GRT exchange backup ability, but at the moment I'm spending days at a time managing backups as every server has its own jobs (multiples!), and if there is a problem in the way I've setup a backup, I have to apply to fix to each job independently!

Mandar_Sahasrab
Level 4
Employee

@ForemanNZ

There appear to be two parts to the question,

  1. Multiple server selection - Kindly refer to Bhavik's post above for creating jobs for multiple servers in one go. That will create jobs per server and they can be further edited to change the selection lists. Just a point to note that jobs per server is the model in BE 2012.
     
  2. Editing multiple jobs - The multi-edit feature in BE 2012 is for editing multiple properties for jobs in one go, instead of applying fix to each job independently, which is the second part of your post. Following link is about the multi-edit feature
    http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO74203

Regards,
Mandar

Elizabeth_Teffn
Level 4
Employee

 

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to give you an update on my request for user feedback. 

I had 9 participants who looked at the mock-ups of the new workflow. Everyone gave me a lot of great feedback which I’m taking back to the developers.

I wanted to thank everyone who participated!  I really appreciate everyone’s input!

Regards… Elizabeth

pguerrero
Level 3

This was a bad idea. There's no reason BE couldn't do simultaneous backup streams to any device that supports it. In this day of multitasking/multithreaded processors and applications it seems backwards to go to a server focused backup strategy. For me backups are managed as a set and all resources are interconnected.

crispyc4
Not applicable

Hi Elizabeth

When will the new workflow be implemented?  

BE 2012 is useless to me in it's current implementation, I now have no choice but to revert to BE 2010, what a waste of money on new 2012 licencing.

Was this new server centric backup method requested by existing Symantec clients or was it just a bad decission made internally without consultation?

 

Please give me feedback as soon as possible.

Thanks

Chris

jaikudo
Level 3

Hi Elizabeth,

I would very much like to be in the loop of this update.

I am downgrading back to Backup Exec 2010 today because of the multiple servers not being in the single job in 2012 sp1.

I have tried playing around with the grouping and all, but i don't want to overwrite any backup nor do i want to have few jobs for servers.

Please forward any links that would keep me updated as I have lost 2 days of backups because of this and now I have to install 2010 again.

 

Thanks

charlesc_act
Level 3

i have to say, after using Backup Exec for over 10 years I am amazed that such a radical change was implemented without more user testing or at least maintaining an option to use the old way of working.

It was only when I found this thread I realised how unuseable this approach is for our scenario and I am now, after a full saturday of migration to a new server, going to be spending my sunday rolling the BE software back to 2010 - and that's if I can get 2012 to uninstall which proved difficult before.

We have just relicensed for this year, but if this is not fixed within the year I will seriously have to look at different software.

jaikudo
Level 3

Hi Elizabeth,

 

I would like to point out another change with the scheduling: In previous versions you could tick and choose which days you want the job to run, but on 2012 you can have weekdays and weekends. Problem with our environment is that our weekend (for backups) is Friday. So having just weekdays and weekends option is not going to do for us.

Again, I would like to have a link for any update news and also to report the bugs and problems (sounds more like a beta version to be honest)

Lesta_G
Level 6

It's easy to get one job to backup all the servers......... answer.... virtualise them all to VMWare vsphere, use vcenter to control all the ESX hosts and then you can do it all in one go using the AVVI agent.... except the media server which will need to be in a separate job.... trivial really....

 

Go on you gotta laugh or you will cry.......

ForemanNZ
Level 4

If you pick Monthly in the schedule, you get extra options like last day of the month, or first saturday, etc

In terms of the server centric, my job list is now corrupt and it won't save changes to my jobs, cannot delete them, cannot do anything ... nice.

In terms of using VMware, yes, I'm using that too, but you cannot select files at the folder level, so while its good for a disaster recovery, its no good for a selective incremental backup