Please help solve or I have to ditch Symantec... 2010R3 crashing

[IT_Dan]

I'm getting frustrated with our current backup solution. We are running a Server 2008 R2 server as our main media server, with remote agents deployed, all of this on BE 2010 R3. I inherited this system when I started at my current position 2 years ago, and all was well for about 6 months... then we started having backup failures. I went through all the troubleshooting steps I could come up with, and ended up blowing away the whole backup DB & system (That was 2010) away and insdtalling 2010 R3. The symptoms have not changed. I deleted the database, bought new media, and have replaced the tape drive 4 times, but the problems I have keep on intensifying, and it appears to be the backup software itself. Working in the software, it drops the connection to the Backup Exec database every 1 - 2 minutes. The database is stored locally on the server in a SQL Express 2008 database, its own instance. I get a good verified backup once a month if I am lucky. In all fairness, part of this has been the tape drive (Dell wouldn't replace it for hardware failure 4 times if it weren't). The part that I am the most irritated with is that the services randomly hang... sometimes the software will run for a couple of days, then there's the instance where yesterday afternoon I restarted all the services... and came in this morning to see them stopped. No Winows log, no alerts, just showing stoped in the BE windowstopped. the tape jobs did not run, but the B2D's fortunately did. I'm a one-man IT shop, and I just don't have hours each day to make sure that our single-tape backup works- If I needed a solution to babysit, I could grab any other project off of my list.

Unfortunately, I am at a crossroads- I am a few months away from renewing my Symantec licensing, and I really don't want this to become my next project.... but I can't renew licensing for a product that does not work. I have 8 successful backups since April of last year, meaning backups where all the data was backed up and verified without encountering hardware errors or software crashes. I would prefer if someone could offer some methods of determining why these services are crashing, and why backups don't even try to run sometimes (Like last night), and don't make mention of missed backup windows consistently... The system was poorly planned (They sold us a LTO3 to back up 2TB nightly!) and I'd like to think that the Symantec product is superior to the rest of the system. Please feel free to PM or email me, or respond to this post with any advice.

Thanks!

[pkh]

The database is stored locally on the server in a SQL Express 2008 database

Is there some reason why you are using a SQL Express 2008 database, rather than the default a SQL Express 2005 database?

When the BE services stopped, is the service for the SQL instance for the BEDB still running?

[IT_Dan]

Thanks for writing back!

I'm sure there is a reason for the non-default database setup- probably because the server is overloaded and other software required the 2008 database- this all predates me. When BE stops, it's the Symantec services that stop- the database instance stays running. Funny though- as much of a mess as this whole thing is, the only system on the server we have any problems with is BE.

[pkh]

If BE is such a mess, you need to clean it up.  If I were you, I would uninstall BE and then re-install it with all the defaults, including the database.  Also, use the default domain admin as the BESA.  You would be prompted for this during the installation process.

Also, as a first pass, you should backup to disk rather than tapes.  You may need to break up your jobs into smaller chunks.

[IT_Dan]

I went through all that a few months ago, and it didn't help. I cannot add any more load to the server- it is already maxed and adding another version of SQL is going to be a disaster. Backups go B2D2T anyway. Part of the problem is that I have a lot of backup jobs and I have to schedule them carefully or I end up with 4 jobs running in the same timeslot and they all stall. Most of my backups are local to the server, but there is still about 100GB betwen our databases and logs plus email and profile data. I rebalanced things the last time I blew the database away and so little has changed that it seems like an exercise in futility... How to I get data on the services themselves? The most pressing issue is the random service failures.

[pkh]

If your media server is maxed out, then this could be a reason for all the failures.

You would not be able to solve your problem on this forum because there are a lot of other trouble-shooting steps that needs to be done on the media server.  It is better that you log a support case with Symantec.