My Daily Experiences with Veritas - and Backup Exec 11D

[David_Nicholson]

My latest form of therapy is to blog about my experiences... enjoy - comment - HELP?

http://y33dave.wordpress.com/

[Corey_Wilson]

ha ha ha

You've got a sense of humour. Enjoyed reading your experiences to date and they certainly mimic everyone else's.

Look forward to following along as you work out the same issues many of us have been facing in our own environments. I mean heck, you can read my past posts to get an idea of where I sit.

[Kevin_Mattes]

*BUMP*

This is awesome, I think everyone should have a read.

[Dano_Oliveira]

David,

Hope things are going better today than your blog indicates.

I am willing to set up a time with you at your convenience to discuss the issues you having.

Please leave me an email address where you can be contacted. If you don't feel comfortable with that I can contact the web admin to retrieve it, that just takes a little longer.

Thanks,
Dano

[David_Nicholson]

YES PLEASE ! email me

dnicholson@villagehomes.com.

I will be at our quarterly meeting for the first half of today. After that - I'd love to get this fixed!

Dave

[Dennis_Thornton]

Dave,
Please keep us posted on your progress.

I've found everyone I talk to at Symantec/Veritas wants to help. Unfortunately it rarely seems to work out. :(

[David_Nicholson]

Oh defiinitely -

I plan on keeping my Blog going until I have my entire 'wish list' completed.

what is that?

1. Successfull Backups to Disk
2. Successfull Duplicates to Tape (email archive)
3. Successfull replicated (i.e. synthetic backups to an offsite device)
4. Successfull scheduling of jobs to account for holidays, etc.

It could be a VERY LONG blog!

[David_Nicholson]

So... today was a better day. I actually had my first successfull backup.
Not my entire environment - yet. But Dano from here helped me configure and backup my exchange mailstores - along with CPS. And then we tested a restore of a deleted message from my mailbox.

Its pretty easy - now that I see how to do it!

thanks again Dano

keep checking the Blog to see progress of my other issues and wish list!

[Kenneth_Sheppar]

David, what was the magic answer to enable the restore of a successfull IS backup using GRT? I've been able to get good, 100% successfull IS backups using GRT for some time now. However, whenever I attempt to restore a single item, entire mailbox (normally or with redirect), I get blank messages. I get the header and subject line, but that's all.

Thanks.

Ken

[David_Nicholson]

I honestly don't have the answer Ken - I'm sorry - Maybe Dano can step in and help?

We went thru the steps of deleting a message... I went to restore it - and bang
there it was

[Kenneth_Sheppar]

I too have been working with Dan and Bill at Symantec. We've gone through many, many attempts. We setup advanced logging and reviewed following the backups and the restores. No good. Again, I can easily backup my entire IS using 11d with and without GRT. B2D and tape both work just fine. Restores are impossible, however.

Maybe when hotfix 11 is released I'll be able to use the features we paid for.

Ken

[David_Nicholson]

I'm in the process of applying patches 6 and 10 right now. As my job last night for my Flat Files (Production Servers) failed. The services just stopped and killed the job. After the patches are applied - I'll try a restore again and see if it works... you got me worried now ... but that's a good thing!

[Kenneth_Sheppar]

Oh, I had little if any issues with flat file backups. I'm using AOFA with my Windows 2003 SP1 servers. I've noticed, however, that I cannot do full backups of my servers as I did with 10d. Specifically, I have to create seperate jobs for flat files, databases and IS. In the past, I was able to queue up a sinlge job to hit everything.

Ken

[David_Nicholson]

Well - it seems I have a little more work to do. As 'continuous protection' - isn't as 'up to the minute or 'continuous' ' as they claim. I just deleted a message - subject lined " Veritas Test Message " ... went to restore it - and it's nowhere to be found. I love a good challenge as much as the next guy ... but holy hell! I have a grease board and a half full of projects just lining up for me to concentrate on - other than bloody backups!

oye!

[Dano_Oliveira]

Good morning David (and Kenneth),

I know we went through much of the CPD for Exchange very quickly. One of the things we talked about yesterday during the Exchange setup was your snapshot window. If I remember, it was set to 2 hours. These snapshot will create viewable restore sets for you to restore from within BE.

With that said here is the answer to the first part. When you delete a message, event, task, etc�, in order for you to granularly restore those deletions, you have to wait for the next snapshot or full backup which ever comes first.

Now to answer the second part. Even though the �snapshot� hasn�t been taken allowing you to view the Information Store for granular restore, this doesn�t mean your Information Store along with the mailboxes isn�t being continuously protected. Continuous Protection and Granular restore are to different technologies that we have coupled together to give you the customer a very powerful tool for Backup and Restoring your data.

David, it the whitepaper I pointed you to, read the chapter on Continuous Protection and Restore. If you have any questions after that, I�ll be happy to answer them for you.

[Chris_Chadwick]

This makes me a little nervous... reading your blog...

When it comes to backups and disaster recovery, you don't want your recovery to be a disaster... have you looked at any other products? I'll keep checking in with your blog, see how things work out for you. I do a lot of consulting and the last thing I want is to recommend and implement a product that will kill any chance of profit I might have had by having to spend all my time just to get it to work once!.

[Randy_Blasik]

Awesome blog, I can confirm I've had almost the exact same problems to the T. I didn't go the route of playing phone tag with Symantec however, the first "support" call I made was enough for me to never call again.

This product was NOT ready for prime time from thier liscensing portal to the 11d product itself. I agree with Dave's day 12-13 blog entry, Symantec couldn't pay me enough to advertise thier product.

3 weeks into the implimentation and I have yet to go more than 4 days in a row without some issue. I have to baby sit this thing every step of the way.

Any questions comments or free Steak dinners send em to: {please do not post e-mail addresses, if you need to communicate please our Private Messaging feature)

Message Edited by John_B on 04-13-2007 01:15 PM

[David_Nicholson]

I've finally updated my BLOG after many many months of unsuccessful attempts to backup my environment.

We are still not 100% but gettting closer. After I get the last piece finished up - then I get to try some restores

everyone cross your fingers for me....

Dave

[Randy_Blasik]

Dave,

   Glad to read that things are finally ironing themselves out in your Blog. I can really honestly say I know what you've been through. My "implimentation" aka "Headache" of BE 11d took about 3.5 months. My setup was similiar to yours, Exchange, Fileservers, Oracle, etc..

   One point I'd like to add for those that read this behind us that I thought was great in Dave's blog was:

   Just because BE has new features (CPS & GRT Exchange) Doesn't mean you need to impliment them. My frustration came in that I was trying to get these features to work and they simply didn't in my case. Things immediatly got better when I stopped worrying about CPS and GRT w/ Exchange.

   All my BE problems aren't solved however but at least I'm getting decent backups. Good luck to all!

[nhbilly]

Nothing like disabling AOFO for all my job worked beautifully - then again I paid for AOFO and all it does it crap my backup job....geesh I thought I had it bad. Good Luck.