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Backup to disk storage offline

SpaceVenom
Not applicable

Hello all,

We have a strange situation, in which from time to time, the backup2disk file share (located on a QNAP NAS) is going offline.

The strange thing is that it does not necessarily happens during a backup at all. The ADAMM.LOG file shows:

 

[4808] 06/25/16 00:00:02.008 LSU Stats:   3334GB Capacity,    166GB Reserved,   1230GB Used,   8350GB LogicalUsed, 6.8:1 DedupeRatio - PureDisk:BACKUP:PureDiskVolume
[4808] 06/26/16 00:00:05.930 LSU Stats:   3334GB Capacity,    166GB Reserved,   1230GB Used,   8416GB LogicalUsed, 6.8:1 DedupeRatio - PureDisk:BACKUP:PureDiskVolume
[6668] 06/26/16 03:54:49.979 PvlDrive::UpdateOnlineState()
       Drive = 1038 "NAS03 - storage 01"
       ERROR = The device is offline!

Windows application event log shows event id 58057:

Backup Exec Alert: Media Error
(Server: "BACKUP") The disk is offline.

This is typically caused by the folder becoming inaccessible due to it being deleted, renamed, or unshared. It may also be caused by a disk full condition. The folder state has been set to offline. Please attend to this condition. Additional detail may be found in the Event Viewer - Application Log. 

 

I've linked a scheduled task to this event to perform a "dir" operation on the backup share, which revealed that when the error happens, there is no problem accessing the NAS share. Dir completed fine, free space seems much higher than the 4GB file limit. Also, there are no events on the NAS indicating out of space condition.

Any advice would be highly appreciated.

Backup server: physical machine, Win2008R2, BE 2012 (ver 14 rev. 1798 64 bit) Service pack4

Kind regards,

Leonid

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Provisioning iSCSI LUNs and attaching the LUN to the Backup Exec Server (thus changing the NAS into a SAN devcie) is much the recommended way to configure B2D across the network (if your NAS device provides iSCSI support). The main reasons for this being

1) Security configuration - an iSCSI setup does not give the inherent problems that trying to get the service account credentials to work sometimes gives CIFS setups, as iSCSI maintains it's own security and does not try to dig into domain (or even worse local Windows SAM) based security

2) iSCSI protocols in theory have better performance than CIFs for backup streams

3) iSCSI protocols are typically more resilient with regards to network connection reliability. (which as per Craig V comment may be your issue.)

4) If you want to you can run Deduplication Storage across iSCSI (as long as it is hardware provided iSCSI and not installing a software iSCSI solution into an operating system as latency issues with some software iSCSI solutions have been seen to cause corruption of the  Deduplication Storage so cannot be supported)

 

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2 REPLIES 2

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

Hi Space,

 

If it doesn't happen during a backup, then it isn't a Veritas/Backup Exec issue and I'd suggest heading on over to the QNAP forums.

However, experience with the (horrible!!!) Iomega px/ix range of NAS devices saw network-related issues when trying to backup to the NAS for me, and this was only resolved once I implemented iSCSI which is a more persistent connection between NAS and media server.

Thanks!

Colin_Weaver
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited Certified

Provisioning iSCSI LUNs and attaching the LUN to the Backup Exec Server (thus changing the NAS into a SAN devcie) is much the recommended way to configure B2D across the network (if your NAS device provides iSCSI support). The main reasons for this being

1) Security configuration - an iSCSI setup does not give the inherent problems that trying to get the service account credentials to work sometimes gives CIFS setups, as iSCSI maintains it's own security and does not try to dig into domain (or even worse local Windows SAM) based security

2) iSCSI protocols in theory have better performance than CIFs for backup streams

3) iSCSI protocols are typically more resilient with regards to network connection reliability. (which as per Craig V comment may be your issue.)

4) If you want to you can run Deduplication Storage across iSCSI (as long as it is hardware provided iSCSI and not installing a software iSCSI solution into an operating system as latency issues with some software iSCSI solutions have been seen to cause corruption of the  Deduplication Storage so cannot be supported)