Backup Exec 2014 - BACKUP TO DISK changes from 2010

[SmartiesRock5]

Hi,

We have Backup Exec 2010 installed on our production server here. We use Backup To Disk to a second drive on the server and point it to folders. When I had installed Backup Exec 2014 on our test server, I found that the backup to disk wizard did not allow pointing to specific folders, but only the drive itself. Is this an expected feature of Backup Exec 2014?

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Yes. From BE 2012 onwards, you can only have one disk storage (B2D folder) per disk volume When you upgrade from BE 2010 to BE 2014, one of the B2D folder will become a disk storage which is read/write and the rest will become Legacy B2D folders which are read-only. You cannot change any of these

[SmartiesRock5]

Thanks for the help.

[dss_thinktank]

Perhaps you can go around that by using network share as destination of "disk-base-storage" of BE2014. F.ex I have multible backup to disk storages on same network share = own subdirectory of same network share for each virtual server we have. I do not know what kind of performance issues this configuration has but it works for us.

[pkh]

How does putting the backup sets from each server in their own disk storage improves your backup operation?

[dss_thinktank]

It keeps backup data more organized and isolates backups of different servers from each other. It also helps me to tune up tape usage, because storage capacity of our tape drives is somewhat limited.

[pkh]

It keeps backup data more organized and isolates backups of different servers from each other.

This does not improve the efficiency of your operation.  In fact, it introduces inefficiencies.

1) You can have at most one server per job which means more jobs and more management.

2) You have to spend time partitioning your disk drive.

3) The free space on your disk drive is fragmented into the various partitions in the drive, thus increasing the chances of a partition running out of space.  It is always better to have 100GB of free space than 10 x 10GB of free space

4) This arrangement is difficult to scale

If your job is using a single disk storage and you have a new server to back up, you can just simply edit your job and add this new server to the job.

Whereas with your arrangement, you would have to 

a) carve out a new partition on your disk for this server.

b) define a new disk storage on this partition

c) define a new job and schedule it.

Which is easier?  The need to separate out backup sets by servers is a perceived need, not an operational one.  This is why  BE 2012 and BE 2014 only allows one disk storage per volume

It also helps me to tune up tape usage, because storage capacity of our tape drives is somewhat limited.

Can you explain this further?  I don't see the connection between your arrangement and tape usage.

[dss_thinktank]

I have not done any specific partitioning with disks because it is "network share" which I am using as disk storage. I simply use own subdirectory for each server, so no disk space is wasted. Job management may require more work, but environment is quite stable so at this moment that is not very big issue for me.

About tapes: I use two tape drives for backups to tape, other one is not integrated with BE2014 so I have to have easy way to select what to backup with that, that is the main reason  why I use subdirectories.

Another thing was that task management of BE2014 has an issue "https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/removing-server-deletes-job-where-deleted-server-no-l...". To avoid this I chose to set up tasks per server so that I do not loose job definitions in case I have to remove server from BE2014 at some point. As far as I know, fix for this issue should be in development but is not yet released.