Incrementals cause issues with Fulls

[nthnu]

We have an interesting issue. Friday rolls around and we make sure things look good (Full to NAS, then to USB) for the Full backups over the weekend. All is good. Monday rolls around and things look good. Tuesday comes and the Incremental runs to a NAS, then to USB. When next Fulls on Friday rolls in, the NAS to USB fails. The Incrementals apparently cause the USB drive to go offline for the Fulls.

The backup-to-disk device 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.

What I did was remove the USB drive folder from the pool, then add it back by dragging and dropping the folder into the pool. Fulls were happy, until the next Incremental runs.

Has anyone had a similar issue?

Thanks

[lmosla]

Are these jobs running in a policy?  If so check to make sure that in the duplicate backup sets job template that 'Run only according to rules for this template' is selected and that in the policy there is a template rule 'after Backup Template " " completes starts Duplicate Backup Sets Template " "to duplicate the backup sets

refer to pkh's solution https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-duplicate-backup-external-usb

[Colin_Weaver]

What are you backing up with the incremental and full sequence of backups?

Is GRT enabled against what you are backing up?

Are you duplicating data to the second device or are you alternating the full and incremental backups of the same selections between devices?

Where is the USB drive attached (Media server or somewhere else)?

Do you ever detach the USB drive?

[nthnu]

Using policies. Those are the settings we used.

Backing up servers, around 2TB of data (files). How would I check if GRT is enabled? The data is being duplicated from the NAS to USB. Fulls on Fridays, Incrementals are Mon-Thurs.

[Colin_Weaver]

GRT relates to Database or virtual machine backups and not those for standard file system backups

Repeating a coupel of my earler questions

Is the USB devcie connected to the media server or somewhere else?

Do you unplug the USB device?

Also do you know if the device goes offline when no job is running, in the middle of a job, at/near the start of the job or near the end of the previous job?

[nthnu]

The USB is connected to the NAS (QNAP).

We unplug it every Friday morning and swap with another USB.

[Colin_Weaver]

OK as the USB is accessed via a share then BE cannot detect the insertion, BUT because of other background processes can sometimes detect that it is no longer connected (DLM for instance)

Once BE marks the remote disk storage device as offline you will have to restart the BE services to bring it back online

We can ONLY reliably detect the availablity (insertion)  of USB disks when they are connected to the media server and a USB insert notification from the local operating system is the only automatic way to bring a USB disk back online.

Also you are gaining nothing by connecting it to the QNAP as the transfer path will be QNAP back to media server over the LAN, back to QNAP via the share to the USB.

EDIT: BE using USB disks has only been designed to handle the disconnection and re-connection of such USB disks that are directly attached to the media server.

EDIT2: I hope this is not a workaround for the lack of ability to pass-through physical storage devices to a virtualized media server as if it is all you have done is avoid implementing one alternative configuration and implemented a different one instead without at any point choosing a fully supported configuration.

[nthnu]

Ok. It would seem that the data was copied from the BE server vm to the QNAP then directly to the USB. We didn't know it copies it back to the BE server then back through the QNAP to the USB. We will see what we can do to set it up on our ESXi server.

[Colin_Weaver]

OK you have just confirmed another unsupported scenario - which I what I suspected.

If you want to write backup sets to USB disk OR physical tape (with the exception of the unique requirements of the NDMP Option or RMALS) then the media server must by PHYSICAL and not VIRTUAL.

As such your current solution is not offically supported and neither is your proposed solution

[nthnu]

Ok, we'll look into that.