Backup to removable disk

[harsi]

Hi.

We are still trying to find a way to reasonably backup to removable disks with BE 2010 R2.

Maybe we still overlooked anything essential but what we got is still not satisfactory.

The problem we are facing is that as soon as the removable disk is removed there is no way to find out which removable disk to put in if you are trying to restore something.

The only thing you get is the media id BD...... but the media location of this media is blanked out if the media is offline. So how to find out on which disk a certain media is located?

BTW. We tried with both classic backup-to-disk-folders and changeable backup-to-disk-folders.

I don't think this an uncommon use case so maybe someone already had figured out a best practise on this.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers.

[itsmeaffinity]

Hi ,

Please follow the link below

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH124516

If you can label your removable disk manually using marker like disk for Monday ,Tuesday & accordingly take backup I beleive that should help you

Or instead of managing set of removable disk if you can take backup to NAS should be good option were you will have one unit with good stroage space

But yes classifying disk with there label & then using for backup should help you considerably

Thank You

[harsi]

Thanks for your answer,

however labeling the disks will not help you as they are already labeled. The problem is how to link these labels with the BE database. On restore BE only tells me the media ID, however there are mass media ids on a single backup disk.

How to get the link from the media id to the label on your disks?

If a disk is online the backup-to-disk-folder name is displayed for every media as location but when it is removed this information disappears.

So if you try to restore file abc.dat BE tells you that it needs media id BD0023453 but not which backup folder it belongs to (if the disk is offline).

Cheers.

[Kiran_Bandi]

Media Set report will come handy to you. If you know which RB2D folders are created on which disk, that's it. As RB2D folders will not be many it will be easy for you to make a note of those.

Regards..

[harsi]

That looks interresting, however I did not get the result similar to the screenshot you posted.

Is this a default or a custom report?

I tried all the reports in the category media but none of them showed me the name of the backup-to-disk-folder it is located in.

That would be the missing link.

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers

[CraigV]

Hi harsi,

You can always use the date on which you want to restore.

Consider keeping a spreadsheet with the folders used on which days.

[harsi]

Hi Craig,

thanks for your suggestions, however I'm not willing to tell our customer to maintain a spreadsheet where he has to enter all Media-IDs after every backup taken. I guess this is something the customer expects from a backup software he will pay around 10.000 EUR for.

Thank's anyway.

Cheers.

[harsi]

Seems that I found the problem.

The backup to disk folder in this report is only metioned if the folder is online. So if you create the report you only get the relation between media id and backup to disk folder for the currently present disk.

So this also does not cure the problem.

Maybe we will generate a report after every backup and save it to disk.

[Colin_Weaver]

Hmm I think that might make a good option for the ideas section for us to consider as an enhancement for a future version as as the moment I think your best option is to keep a manual spreadsheet on which drive is present on which date and what backups run on those dates. (which I would possibly recommend anyway as if you truncate your catalogs based on time - then any older media would give you teh same problem)

The ideas section is available from the forums menu on this site.]

Also be aware that

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH124516

That someone refered to on this thread is for Removable B2D - but a USB disk is not a valid Removable B2D device as Removable B2D devcies are cartdige or platter based (i.e. DVD-ROM, CD-ROm or RDX drives)  The admin guide does state what device aare supported by removable b2d.

A usb disk should have a standard B2D created on it.

[Kiran_Bandi]

No both B2D folders in the sample report are online but the RB2D folder is offline. Before running the report you have to select the media set, to which you RB2D folder belongs.

Regards....

[harsi]

Here this is not working.

The backup-to-disk-folder is only displayed for the inventoried folders. So if you pull the disk the inventory information is still present even if the folder is marked offline. You can verify this by looking if medias are still shown if you select the backup-to-disk-folder.

So if you restart backup exec services only the information for the plugged in disk is displayed.

Can you verify this?

It seems that the information which media belongs to which bd-folder is not persistend and as such is not recorded in the database and as such can not be retrieved.

Regards.

[harsi]

I found the follwoing workaround:

Before the backup job starts a script runs which checks which disk (backup-folder) is currently plugged in and alters the media prefixes in the sql database (table dbo.MediaLabel) accordingly.

This way you can see directly from the media name which disk (bd-folder) it is located on.

I anyone has a better idea to not hesitate to let me know

Cheers.

[BryanK7]

Why does the administrators guide list removable hard disk as an option?

What is a USB hard disk if not a removable hard disk?

[BryanK7]

I second this. 

Why do I have to track this in a spreadsheet?

If you configure a USB hard disk as a removable back to disk folder it automatically creates a FLDRxxx (forgive me if that's not the correct designation I changed the default) media on the device.  BE does nothing with it from what I can tell.

Why not have backup exec actually create this folder or just associate the B2Dxxxx files with it so I can track label the disk as FLDRxxx and find it later with the media reports?

[CraigV]

It's an option because BE 2010 R2 is better enhanced to use them. A removable HDD = HP's RDX. That would be configured in BE as a removable drive, allowing a type of ration as with tapes.

A USB drive just acts like a B2D folder. You'd have to restart BE's services to redetect it.

[harsi]

Finally I took a slightly different approach.

I wrote a script which is executed once a day after all backups have finished which enumerates all medias in the database and sets the name of the backup-to disk-folder where it belongs into the media description fileld if not already present.

This way the information to which b2d-folder a media belongs is persistent and can easly be seen from within BE GUI.

Only things to be aware of is that the script is executed before you remove the removable disk and an inventory job is started.

I again verified that the b2d-folder / media relation ship is not persistent. It is written to the database but if the disk is removed and an inventory jobs is performed it is removed from thee database (LocationID is set to 0).

I attached the script to this thread, maybe anyone else has similar demands.

As the script uses Windows authentication to access the DB it must run within the context of a user which is allowed to write to the DB. If BE and MSSQL are not on the same machine, simply modify the connection string accordingly.

Cheers.

[CraigV]

...Hi Harsi,

I'd go 1 step further if I was you and create a new download in the download section. It is 1 way to reach more people!

Laters.

[harsi]

I took a deeper look into the BD db and found that all information about b2d-folder/media relationship is recorded in the db.

Interrestingly there are two tables where this info is saved. Media and CatMedia. It seems that Media only contains tape compatible medias (like true tapes and B2D folders) which is also not persistent and CatMedia additionally contains information about IMG folders (for GRT backups) and is persistent .

In the latter table all medias are linked to the devices they belong to via device guids so you can see the relationship to the B2D folders.

The GUI of backup exec uses both tables for display depending on the media type. This is the reason why the B2D info is always displayed correctly for IMG folders and vanishes for B2D media files.

IMHO this should be changed so that info for B2D media files is also read from CatMedia table. This way b2d folder would always be displayed correctly as location for all b2d related media files.

Cheers.

[Colin_Weaver]

Ok just to clarify both BryanK7's comment on the admin guide and CraigV's comment

If you look a few lines higher on the page that BryanK provided it states:
"You can create a removable backup to disk folders on any device that has removable media"

What is does not state but you need to know is that a USB disk is a removable device it does not have removable media.

If you then look in the Hardware conmpatibility list we have a section for Removable Backup to disk which contains RDX Devices, GoVault devices and Iomega Devices - these are (I believe) all cartridge based - yes some of them are USB because the carrier that accepts the cartridge is USB and should remain connected not unplugged.

Finally we did a load of work in 2010 R2 that is meant to be able to detect the insert of USB holding standard B2D targets without needing a service restart - there is one small gotcha   though - the original eject has to be done when jobs are not active on the device.

[harsi]

Is it save to remove media without stopping BE services? Not sure if BE does any caching beside OS caching.

We are currently using an eSATA connected single bay enclosure and have multiple harddisks to be inserted into.

We did not find any problem so far however we deactivate the drive on OS level (using devcon) before swapping to ensure OS level cache is flushed before.

Regards.