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Duplicate Backup more than once

Paul_Gentle
Not applicable

‎04-01-2008 12:34 PM

I think what I'm trying to do might be odd but please hear me out.
 
We have a situation where we need to transfer our backups offsite on a daily basis. What I would like to do, but have been unable to get backup exec to work this way is the following
 
Sat Full Backup of all systems to disk and Duplicate weekly to tape
Sun-Friday Differential backup of all systems to disk
 
Monday - Friday the process I would like to have is as follows
  • Duplicate Full backup and differential Backup from overnight to Tape for offsite transfer
  • Export offsite tapes and have tapes delivered to offsite location
  • Import Previous offsite tapes for use the next day
  • Duplicate differential backup to local tape copy

I have tried to setup a policy that will handle the Duplicate and set it according to schedule, but it appears that once the weekly is duplicated it will not duplicate again until I run a full backup again.

I also duplicate the weekly and daily diff backups to tape right after they are run for a local tape copy. Since once these duplicates run no other duplicates will run either. Can I only duplicate something once?

What might I be doing wrong?

Paul

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1 REPLY 1

Jeff_Gowlett
Level 3

‎04-01-2008 05:05 PM

I don't know why, but BE is a bit of a pain when it comes to duplicating.
When you have a duplicate job setup in a policy, it will only duplicate the backup once. It doesn't see any reason why you would need to duplicate it again. I believe there should be a checkbox that would allow you to duplicate the backup again.
 
Saying that, if you have two duplicate jobs in the policy, you can duplicate the job more than once. For instance, my setup it a little complex (to get around BE flaws).
 
I use a 28 day cycle because my staff have a habbit of losing files and not realising its missing until weeks or sometimes months later.
In my policy I have jobs to do the following:
  • 1st day of cycle (Sunday) - Full Backup to B2D #1
  • Mon-Fri for the rest of the cycle (20 days) - Inc backups to B2D #1.
  • Mon-Fri for the rest of the cycle (20 days) - Duplicate job set to duplicate the full & inc backups above to an external Lacie drive (B2D #2) that I connect every morning when I get to work and pull it off when I leave work. It can't be setup to duplicate at night as this would defeat the purpose of an offsite backup.

This process alone, gives me the ability to quickly recover a file from a permenantly connected disk (B2D #1) when one of the staff delete something - It happens regularly. It also gives me the redundancy of having an offsite duplicate of everything in the event of a fire - disaster recovery.

I bought two external Lacie drives for my offsite backup with the intention of running the duplicates overnight. My theory was I would be able to rotate the drives each night. In the event of a fire during the night, I would be able to recover the systems from the other Lacie drive. For this to happen, BE would need to duplicate all the backup jobs to each disk - This is where my theory stopped becuase BE wouldn't do it for me. That's why I decided to only use one Lace drive and changed the duplicate to run each morning.

In addition to the above, I discovered that a 28 cycle wasn't long enough for some of the staff. A file might go "missing" and no one realises it's gone until well outside the 28 day cycle. So to accomadate for this, I have created the following in the same policy:

  • On the 28th day of Cycle (Saturday) - Another duplicate job has been setup to duplicate the Full & all the Incremental backups to another onsite drive (B2D #3). I assume because this is a different duplicate job, BE allows me to duplicate all the data again.

Overwrite Protection periods are set to:

  • B2D #1 - 28 days.
  • B2D #2 - 28 days.
  • B2D #3 - 56 days.

What this means is that I can keep 12 weeks (4 Weeks on B2D #1 & 8 weeks on B2D #3) of data onsite while still having an offsite disaster recovery option. Most people wouldn't need 12 weeks of onsite backups, but when you have staff that delete or move files without even knowing it, you need a 12 week cycle.

The story doesn't end here..... In the last 6 months, I have been requested to recover files from outside the 12 week period - the oldest file requested was from September 2005!! Luckily, I had some old tapes with that data and I could still recover it for them. But to accomadate for this, I have incorporated the following:

  • Every 16 weeks, I have another duplicate job setup in the same policy to duplicate the full backup from B2D #1 to tape. Which is then stored onsite and is setup as a data archive with a protection period of 20 years. In otherwords, I am continually purchasing more tapes.

Doing this has two benefits:

  1. I have a pretty high chance that I can recover almost any file that was ever changed. It's not a 100% solution, but's it pretty good odds.
  2. I have a permenant data archive which may be used years down the track if someone decides to take us to court.

As you can see, you can get BE to duplicate backups more than once, but you have to change your way of thinking.

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