Daily acts as full after weekly fails - is this normal behavior?

[shorrj]

Greetings,

We are running BE 12.5 and using rotations of weekly/monthly fulls (modification time) and daily differentials (modificaiton time).  Usually things work fine with this scheme.  Once in a while a weekly job might fail, sometimes it will run all the way through and maybe 1 or 2 files have an access denied error or something like that.  When this happens, the next daily that runs after the failed weekly backs up ever file on every server in the rotation all over again.  I would really like to know if this is "by design" and if we can (or should) change this behavior.  I can understand that if a weekly job were to completely fail there is a need to get a full copy of everything.  But like right now, after the weekly job basically backed up every file but 2 over the weekend, I am now watching the daily do it all over again, using up space on my b2d folder and it will continue to go for over a day.  And if I cancel it, the same thing will happen with the next daily.  Am I missing something here?  Thanks very much for any assistance.

[Kiran_Bandi]

Once in a while a weekly job might fail, sometimes it will run all the way through and maybe 1 or 2 files have an access denied error or something like that.

If the status of a full job is failed, next differential backup of that client will become full.

If you cancel that next job also will work as full.

I think this is normal behaviour only.

[shorrj]

Thank you for the reply Kiran.  I can partially understand the logic to that behavior, but not completely.  Even if the daily differential becomes like a full, it won't be saved for X number of weeks or months like my weekly/monthly jobs do.  My dailies overwrite after one week.  I definately understand the need to get that full backup, but when you have slowish backups and you've spent days backing up 1.2TB over 5 servers and 2 files fail....and then it wants to redo the entire backup all over again...that's a killer!

[Kiran_Bandi]

Yes, i agree with you.

Only thing you can do is find out the reason for failure of your full backup. Try to resolve it, and run the full backup again. (Check out the job log.)

Then your differentials will work just fine. 

I know this is not what you are expecting, but i don't think something else can be done.

One more you can do is split the backup job. (1 job for 1 server)

If a server's full job fails also only that differential will become full.

For troubleshooting purpose also it will be easy for you.

[Ken_Putnam]

If the status of a full job is failed, next differential backup of that client will become full.

Since when?

INCR/DIFF work off the Archive Bit (or modified time) and have nothing to do with the success or failure of the preceeding FULL job.  If the failure was for any of a number of (mostly inconsequential) reasons, any data that was backed up and not changed will still be skipped the next INCR or DIFF

I will admit that the skipped data being on media the will be overwritten before FULL media would is a problem, tho.

[shorrj]

I have noticed the behavior I stated since I started using Backup Exec 12.5 which was my first experience.  How you describe it (Archive bit/modified time) is how the rotation normally works.  But like I mentioned, whenever the weekly/monthly fails, the next one backs up everything.  I've got an incident with symantec for them to clarify.