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How to use a mid-backup hard drive properly?

spyrule
Level 2

Hello,

First off, I am not a Symantec BackupExec expert... nor even a backup expert at all for that matter.  But I've got 15 years experience working with servers, so I am technically competent.  On that note...

I am running Backup Exec 2010 R2 and we use External USB Hard drives to backup to for the time being (we have a full datacenter being built, but that's going to take 6 months to stand up).

We started backing up directly to USB hard drives, but we found some of the larger backups taking so long, they we're interfering with the next days backup schedule.  So, I setup the server with an internal 1TB drive as a "in-between" drive to perform backups too.

 

The problem is that I am now running out of space on the 1TB, despite me having setup Duplication from the internal 1TB to the external 1TB.  It seems as though most of the duplication isn't occuring, but the internal 1TB is filling up, and not "clearing" out older backups.

Can someone point me on the proper method on how to setup Backup Exec to do the following :

1) Backup to an internal Permanent Hard drive

2) "copy" or duplicate the completed backup to an external Hard drive (we cycle through an external hard drive every two weeks), and verify the backup is good.

3) Clear out the Internal Permanent Hard drive to make room for the next days backup cycle.

 

Any help, pointers or suggestion are welcome.

 

Spyrule.

7 REPLIES 7

VJware
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Create Backup To Disk (B2D) folders on your pemanent hard drive for backups..

Set appropriate overwrite protection period & append protection periods (OPP and APP) for retention periods..

Set up duplicate jobs which would duplicate existing backup sets to external drive

EDIT**

Few KB articles for your reference:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH164267

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH24544

spyrule
Level 2

would it be best to include the catalogs onto the external drive, or leave them on the internal drive?

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

Are  they not overwriting at all, or is the intermediate disk just filling up?

 

From Tools\Options\Media Management

if "use scratch..." is selected, BackupExec will continue to create new BKF files until the disk is physically full, then start re-useing the oldest files

if "use overwriteable ..." is selected, and BackupExec sees files who are past the OPP (Overwrite Protection Period) then they will be used first.  If your OPP is too short, and the Duplicate job doesn't run or fails to run properly, you may wipe out your existing backups before you can duplicate them. 

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

if "use scratch..." is selected, BackupExec will continue to create new BKF files until the disk is physically full, then start re-useing the oldest files

When the disk is full, the job will fail due to a lack of space.  It will not re-use any of the recycleable file.

Ken_Putnam
Level 6

If the oldest files are past their OPP, they should overwrite

Since the complete option is

Overwrite recyclable media contained in the targeted media set before overwriting scratch media

why would they not?

 

pkh
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

 

If "Overwrite recyclable media contained in the targeted media set before overwriting scratch media" is chosen, then BE will overwrite any overwriteable .bkf files before creating new ones.
 
However, if "Overwrite scratch media before overwriting recyclable media contained in the targeted media set", then BE will create new .bkf files even though there are overwriteable .bkf files on the disk.  It will do so until the disk is filled and the job failed due to a lack of disk space.  With this option, BE will not overwrite any existing overwriteable .bkf files under any circumstances, like when the disk is full  which is what you said previously.  There are numerous past discussions which the users come to grief when they did not change this option to the "overwrite recycleable media" option.  This option is the default when you install BE.

Lesta_G
Level 6

I would beg to differ with the scratch option - to a point.

My experiance (my B2D is set to overwrite in 3 days) is that if this option is set to "Overwrite scratch media before overwriting recyclable media contained in the targeted media set",  BE will use the recyclable media "99% of the time" and will occasionally create new scratch media files.

The effect is that over a month or two the disk will eventually fill up, causing backup issues.