Need Help with backup to disk job

[PDurandjr]

 I need help with creating a backup to disc job.  I have been previously been backing up to tape and would like to use a NAS to do backup to disc.  I have an incramental backup job that runs Monday through Thursday that is about 195 gigs per backup.  On Fridays I back everything up which is about 290 gigs so I'm backing up about 1 TB per week.  Here's what I've done so far.  I've created a backup to disk folder and called it NAS under devices.  I've set the max backup to disk size at 2 TB.  The idea I have is to not allow my backups to grow larger than 2 TB and to write over older backups within the 2 TB once the max of 2 TB has been reached.  My NAS is 6 TB but I need to be able to backup my NAS backup directory to a 3 TB external drive to take off site.  I started my backups with these settings earlier this week.  I have a .bkf file which is 2 TB but my biggest concern is that my Exchange stores are being saved outside of this .bkf file which I am guessing is a compressed file where all backup data is being stored.  I am not sure why the Exchange files are being backed up outside of the .bkf file.  Maybe this is normal behavior?  If so, my backup directory is going to be much bigger than 2TB which will cause problems backing up to my external drive to be taken offsite.  If anyone can offer up any help in this or advise of a different way to accomplish this I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks so much!

[Ken_Putnam]

I wouldn't set the BKF file size up that much.  For Disk jobs you should be running only overwite, no appends.  As such if you have a BKF size of 2TB, then every 195GB backup would create a new file wasting huge amounts of space.  Let BackupExec keep track of all the 4 or 5 GB files

DO NOT try to just copy the BKF files to another external drive, if you, then you need to copy htem back, inventory and catalog before you can restore from them.  Dupllicate them, and you can restore directly from the External Drive

The IMG files are because you have selected the GRT option for your Exchange backups. Again, just let BackupExec manage the disk files

[PDurandjr]

Ok, thanks Ken.  So I totally misunderstood the process.  I thought that if you set to 2 TB all backups would reside within the 1 file and then overwrite older jobs as the file reached capacity.  I understand what you are saying and will take your advice.  Only question I have now is how do you control when backups get deleted as to not have these backup jobs building until the NAS is full?

Thanks!!!

[pkh]

Go to Tools ---> Options ---> Media management and check

1) the Overwrite Protection Level is set to at least Partial

2) the option to Overwrite recycleable media before scratch is chosen

After this, you got to set the OPP correctly so that BE will overwrite the files when their OPP expires.

[PDurandjr]

Is there a way to duplicate within Backup Exec?  If so, where do I go?

I won't be using the external HDD hopefully ever.  It's for DR.  The NAS will be my main backup media for backing up and restoring.  But you're right, if it's easy to duplicate it would be better than just copying the files to an external drive to avoid having to catalog.

[pkh · Accepted solution]

Just set up a policy with a backup template and a duplicate template.  Link the duplicate template to the backup template and then generate the two jobs, backup and duplicate.  See the documents below

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO22936

http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO22935

[PDurandjr]

Everything seems to be going well using the advice that I recieved from this thread.  I have cut down the file sizes of the bkf files to the default size of 4 gigs.  Files are getting overwriting as configured but I do have one question regarding the Exchange backup.  The GRT files are not getting overwritten.  New files are being written with each day's backup.  I was hoping these files would get overwritten as the overwrite protection period expires.  Will I need to manually delete these older Exchange backups?

[pkh]

I think you should

[PDurandjr]

I just noticed that my BKF files are not being overwritten.  For example, I have an incramental job which is using a media set that has an OPP of 1 week.  It's been more than a week but new BKF files are being written.  Is there a sure shot way to stop new BKF files from being written and use what's already there assuming the OPP has passed?