Backup Exec storage & duplicate entry problems

[Exec29]

Alright where to begin. 

Well first off, I noticed that our company's backups had stopped working shortly after the new years and the storage disc was full. It all related to this:

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH186653

The storage list was full of duplicate entries. I was able to get to the Job History -view but not the tree -view. Deleting anything, even lets say 50gb might have taken half an hour or so. Deleting anything larger might have taken half a day or so. Then even after deleting a file or a duplicate it was still there. No errors during the procedure no nothing, except that there was a window saying the file was being deleted. Ok so I google around and find instructions to stop some of backupexec services and try again. That worked! One file deleted instantly (although maybe even too fast). Afterwards I couldn't get all the services back up and running, so I restarted the entire server. I was able to delete massive amount of old backups from Job history, and again, instantly. It should've taken time but it all happened in a matter of seconds.

Now there are no longer any duplicate entries but backups aren't running due to lack of storage space. So I was able to delete the history but not the actual data (eventhough it asks you "are you sure you want to delete job history ".." as well as its associated log). I don't know what to try next. We still have some important company backups and don't want to lose those so starting from the scratch isn't an option. Has this happened to anyone else and what work arounds are available?

We're using Backup Exec 2012, which for what I've read isn't famous for it's efficiensy.

[pkh]

BE 2012 is very close to EOL.  I would suggest that you upgrade to the latest BE version which is BE 16.

[Exec29]

Is there any other way?

I've just newly started at this company so this goes into a slightly unfamiliar territory. What I noticed was that after yesterday's efforts the backups I had deleted from the Job history view were still found in the backup jobs list. I could now delete these (and it actually took the usual normal time). However, the disc is full. We actually have 2 discs, one called Deduplication disk storage 0001 and the other Disk storage. I was assuming it was Raid and my predecessor here said that he thought the latter disc was supposed to be offline but was unsure, and I noticed a few old jpegs where the disc was actually online. Now I just cannot bring it back online for whatever reason. I've tried a lot of different things, including: https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.TECH189831

But no luck, it refuces to go online from the console as you probaly already guessed. If I check the alarm history it has had "disc offline" alarms in the past which means it has been up prior to the new years before the problems begun. Although when I check the job history it looks empty ( could be due retention?).

Also at the home screen it says we're supposed to have 10TB of storage space, meaning each disc would be 5Tb each.

Anymore ideas?

[Exec29]

Jeez,

https://www.veritas.com/support/en_US/article.v87169884_v113799574

"When you use Backup Exec's Delete option on a deduplication disk storage device, the folder is removed from the Backup Exec database. However, the folder and the files in it remain on the disk. When you delete backup sets from a deduplication disk storage device, it may take up to 48 hours for more space to become available. Backup Exec cannot always calculate the amount of space that will be made available."

Could it be I've been jumping up and down for nothing?!

Well still, could you please check that screen shot and share some thoughts?

[Exec29]

And one last thing. If all jobs have failed since the new years, how on earth can it be possible that when I look at the backup sets, I can se each job and the storage size it takes (normally betweem10-500Gb) even though none of those jobs actually completed? Makes no sense and makes it more difficult to delete things not knowing whether they are taking space or not.

[kalamchi]

Hi,

Have you tried to expire the backup sets you don't need ? i'm not sure if that's the answer you are looking for, or if this method works for BackupExec 2012. I hope it helps.

I use BackupExec 2015, and I have been battling with disk space for a while. The easiest way was to manually expire backup sets that I don't need. it takes seconds to do so, and the space will be claimed almost immediately (somtimes it takes few minutes to show up on the disk usage bar since the expire process might be still working in the background, so allow it it's time depending on the backup sets sizes), but the method is effective.

Under Storage tab, double-click on the disk in question, then click backup sets. Right-click the backup set you want to expire, and click expire.

See attached.

Good luck

[Exec29]

Hi,

Thanks for the answer. Unfortunately in 2012 there is no such option (at least not for me) than to expire backups. I only have Delete, Retain, Catalog, Duplicate, Verify and Details (this being greyed out). There were tons of problems with the backup exec starting from the catalogue indexing to duplicate entries, which I have mostly managed to fix.

I guess the main problem is that I have no idea how this was originally inteded to work out. Right now I have a few backups left from Dec. which seem to be the only ones left that have succesfully completed. Any ideas how I could secure them from expiring (and possibly store into a save place)?

Also while battling out with these issues I noticed that along with Deduplication disk storage I had Disk storage 0001 disk that was originally offline. My predecessor claimed that he thought it had always been that way but I discovered that it had went down on late Nov 2016. Both disks are 5Tb each and from the old documents there was a notion of "Backup disk 6.5TB RAID 5". Could it be that somehow all the storage have been saved into the duplication disk instead of the storage disk after the latter had disconnected (I manually got it back online from iSCSI Initiator under Control Panel today)? The problem is I haven't got a clue how these were intended to work from the get go. Now the deduplication disk is entirely full and the disk storage 0001 entirely empty. I'm not sure am I supposed to have 5Tb in use to store data or 10Tb as it says in the Exec home screen. Even if I count all the backup sets together (failed and succesful ones) they reach 10Tb with ease and that's even after manually deleting TONS of backup jobs.

If a job fails it still shows for example 200Gb, which I find very odd. This system should have been either upgraded or changed ages ago.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

[kalamchi]

Hi,

Yes, you can keep the backup sets, by setting their retain. Under Storage tab, double-click on the disk where you have those job stored, then on the left panel click Backup Sets. Now right click on the backup you want to keep and choose Retain, a new window will pop with options, choose User Defined and a field with Explanation will appear (it is optional to fill that field, you can just put a small note why you are keeping this backup set, or you can simply leave it empty), then click OK. This will prevent Backup Exec from deleting the job when it expires.

This is how it's done in Backup Exec 2015. I hope it works for you.

For the size it shows, older versions of backup exec (including backup exec 2015 before the latest updates) used to show the provisioned size of the virtual machine, rather than the actual size of the stored backup set. This has been changed after some updates and hotfixes to Backup Exec 2015.

Best regards