Questions on Backup To Disk To Tape - B2D2T

[Bryan_Hunt]

Hello,

We are setting up some B2D2T backups, and have a few questions about the process.

Our plan is to run full backups to disk on Sundays, incremental backups appended on Monday-Friday, then move the backups to tape on Saturday.

- I see two different 'move from disk to tape' schemes mentioned in the documentation and the forums.  One is to set up a Duplicate job, the other is to 'backup the backup', using another backup job.  Am I correct in assuming that to restore a file from the 'backup of the backup', I would have to restore the entire backup from tape to disk, then run another restore to get the single file back?  Does a Duplicate job allow me to restore one file from the image that is now on tape?

- When I created a Duplicate job, I expected one of the Selection options to be 'the entire contents of backup-to-disk folder xxxxx'.  There doesn't seem to be a way to select the B2D folder?  If I have to select by Media Name, does that imply that I have to manually change the job weekly, as the Media Name changes when I run my full backup on Sunday?  Do the two additional files in those folders also have to be backed up?  Changer.cfg and Folder.cfg?

- Assuming that the Duplicate job runs cleanly, I want to delete the backup files that are on disk.  Should I just set up a schedule task to delete the files before my full backup on Sunday?

Thanks for any and all information.

Bryan Hunt

[Hemant_Jain]

Duplicate backup job must be your preferred method compared to "backup of backup". the simple reason that duplicate backup would be a direct restore and not a staged restore, ulike "backup of backup" method, where you would first stage it to disk and then restore from there. So, duplicate backup method was designed primarily to help you create a new backup set and discard the old one and continue to perform the restore from the new set, without staging it during restore. In your setup, policy can be used to configure backup job. You can create a duplicate job either to duplicate existing backup sets or you can have a duplicate backup job, follow an existing scheduled job. If you use the second method, you dont need to modify the duplicate job, every time you want it to be run. You can use following document to understand policy based duplicate job:

http://support.veritas.com/docs/284575

For duplicate jobs outside a policy, this document may help:
http://support.veritas.com/docs/256096

Please mark it a solution, if this is useful.
Thanks

[Colin_Weaver]

 If by Backup a backup you mean - run a tape based job against the file system where your B2D files are located - then I would strongly recommend against it - as the media families can become inconsistent and cause problems cataloging media (which then causes restoration issues.)

Therefore if possible always duplicate a backup as you run less chance of creating inconsistent media families

[Ken_Putnam]

- When I created a Duplicate job, I expected one of the Selection options to be 'the entire contents of backup-to-disk folder xxxxx'. 

You can only duplicate in a Job by Job basis, AFAIK.

The template available from Symantec to do B2D2T does a Duplicate to Tape as soon as the B2D is complete.  And is the only way to do it automagically


- Assuming that the Duplicate job runs cleanly, I want to delete the backup files that are on disk.  Should I just set up a schedule task to delete the files before my full backup on Sunday?

Rather than delete them, use OPP and let BackupExec re-use the existing BKF files.  (This should also  reduce the execution time a little)


I would also make all my jobs Overwrite when writing to Disk.  Appending will extend the OPP for all the BKF files in an "append family"

[Bryan_Hunt]

Thanks all for the information.

The feedback about duplicate versus backup-the-backup tells me that duplicate to tape is definitely the way to go for us then, as we want to be able to restore directly from tape.

I have set up a separate job to run once a week doing a final B2D with a D2T template job running after it.  That should prevent us from having to change the D2T job manually each week.

I will try this schedule for a week and see how it runs.  I will report back here with either positive results or more questions.

Is it possible to mark multiple responses as "solutions"?

Thanks.

Bryan Hunt

[Ken_Putnam]

Not on this new board software, sorry

Used to be you could award 10 points for a solution and two 5 point awards for "helpful" responses, but that was quite a while ago

[Bryan_Hunt]

Well, more progress but still not there.

I am doing a full backup to disk on the weekend, then incremental backups to disk during the week.  I split the incremental job into two: M-R, then on Friday another incremental with a duplicate job running behind it.  My thought was that the duplicate job would take the entire backup set (full and all incrementals) to tape.  But no, it only took the last incremental.  <sigh>... This *really* shouldn't be this hard...

So, I'm back to my original dilemma, how do I duplicate the entire contents of a B2D folder to tape? 

On a Duplicate Backup Set Job there is no selection "by Backup To Disk Folder", so that's out.  Every time I run a new Full Backup, the media label changes, so I can't select on that (without manually changing the job each week to select the new media name). 

I don't know of any way to force the Full Backup to use a specific media label.  Is that possible?

If not, I guess that we will have to change the D2T jobs weekly to use the current media lablel.

Thanks.

Bryan Hunt

[Hemant_Jain]

You need to create a duplicate job using policy. So, create a policy with three templates:
Full backup, Incremental backup and Duplicate backup. In the duplicate backup template, you can specify the source as Full and Incremental in a single template. This should work for you.

Thanks

[Bryan_Hunt]

Ahh...  now I see.  I have never created a policy/template design before.  I always thought that they were a one-to-one ratio. 

I set up a policy with four templates and a duplicate rule.  This looks like it will work perfectly.

I have to wait until next Saturday to implement the new jobs/schedule.  I will let you know results (probably in two weeks).

Thanks for all of the help, especially yours Hemant.

Bryan Hunt

[Bryan_Hunt]

Well, close, but no cigar.....

I setup policies/templates only to be trapped by the same problem that I had before...

I created a B2D2T policy.  The policy has 4 templates:
- Full backup to disk on Sunday morning at 12:00am (overwrite)
- Incremental backups Monday-Thursday at 7:00pm (append)
- Incremental backup Friday morning at 9:00am (append)
- Duplicate to tape (according to rule)

I setup the rule to say that the duplicate job runs immediately after the Friday backup.

All works well *EXCEPT*, the duplicate job only duplicates the incremental data from the Friday backup.  I want to duplicate all three backups to tape.

If I select all three templates as source for the backup, it wants to setup/run three duplicate to tape jobs.  I only want one, and I only want it to run once per week.

Is there no way to achieve what I want without setting up the duplicate job manually?

Thanks.

Bryan Hunt

[JT_T]

Bryan,

If i got your point right, you would need to use Synthetic backups. For ability to use Synthetic backups you would need to buy "Advanced disk base backup" option. Using that, you could create Full baseline backup and incrementals, they would be combined together and you could duplicate backups using only one duplicate job.

Otherwise you need to create and run different duplicate jobs for every B2D backup you have.

[Bryan_Hunt]

JT,

Let me verify my understanding of what a synthetic backup is.  You do a full backup, followed by incrementals.  But, instead of having multiple files, the incrementals are merged into the full backup creating a new, up-to-date, full backup.   Is that right?

In any case, sounds like over kill for what we want here.  It just seems that, in BE 12.5, I should be able to automate anything that I can do manually.  If I can manually create a duplicate to tape job that will take my full backup and all of my incrementals from disk to tape, why can't I create an automated job to do the same?

Thanks.

Bryan Hunt

[JT_T]

Hi Bryan,

Haven't used Synthetic backups for long time, but if i do remember it correctly, it works exactly as you described. BE runs baseline (full) backup, incrementals after that, and synthetic job to merge those together.

Duplication of Synthetic backups is something which I'm not sure about it, but if i do remember it correctly, you can set duplication only for "merged/combined" synthetic job, if you don't want to duplicate every full and incremental.

When having this way to approach your goal, maybe someone from Symantec's support can tell if we have figured this out correctly, of if there's been huge misunderstanding.

But be aware, there's some limitations with synthetic backups, as u can use it only with file backups, not with databases and 2003/2008 server system states. Here's some more info about synthetic backups;

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/311705.htm

[Bryan_Hunt]

Well, the saga continues...

I gave up on using the templates to do the backups and duplicates because of the issue mentioned above.  So I set up all manual jobs again and I have to manually tell the duplicate job what dataset to back up each week.  Even though the dataset name is the same each week, the act of overwriting it seems to "break" the selection in the duplicate job.

So, all works well for the week up until the duplicate job.  That fails with the dreaded "e000944" error.  I say dreaded because, even though I had never seen it before, it appears that *many* other people have.  And just like most of the articles that I have read, the only way that I can get around it is to run a manual duplicate job.

I am at a loss as to why something so simple is either *extremely* difficult, or impossible, to do with Backup Exec?

Thanks.

Bryan Hunt

[Bryan_Hunt]

Now back to using templates for the backups to tape and disk.  I believe that I have found how to get what I need with them.

Since my "cycle" is a full week, it takes a while to determine if I really have it set up correctly.

One question on templates, I don't seem to be able to set an "automatic cancellation" time on them?  Is that not available for template/policy jobs?

Thanks.

Bryan Hunt