Shared Devices Between Managed Media Servers

[pperalta]

Hi Symantec Community,

I'm new to Symantec and was wondering if someone out there could help me out.  I started a new position and am trying to understand how the previous backup administrator architected the environment.  More specifically, I am trying to figure out the logic on how a media server is selected to write to a device when the device is shared between two media servers.  

Here's the scenario.  We are backing up data from servers and writing them to a dedupe appliance at the local site, however it is using a remote media server to write the data to the dedupe appliance.  So, it is passing the data over the WAN twice before it lands on the dedupe appliance.  From what I can tell the local media server and the remote media server both can see the dedupe appliance (destination).

I am trying to understand why it is not using the local media server if it can also see the dedupe appliance.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

pperalta

[pkh]

From what you described, it is indeed strange to use the remote media server to do the backup and write to the local dedup appliance.  I am afraid you would have to consult your predessor as to the logic of this arrangement.

If you cannot figure out why the remote media server is used, try switching the job to the local media server and see what happens.

[Colin_Weaver]

If the remote media server is a CASO server (ESO license installed) then it may just be managng the jobs that the appliance runs and not actually running them.

Other than that a typical scenario (which also uses a CASO) would be

Backup Job run om local media server/appliance and write to deup folder - a second duplicate phase then tales place to copy the data from thd dedup folder on the appliance to the dedup folder on the remote server (giving an offsite copy) The job is running in what is known as Optimized Duplication - becase it is copying deduplicated data so not using the same bandwidth that a dircet backup would use.

If neither of the above comments is what is configured for you then it does sound like you have something odd configured.

[pperalta]

I just attached a screenshot of history for a particular job I'd like to use for an example.  In our environment, we have a media server named sdbackup02, backup02, and sdbackupcas01 (CASO server).  Looking at the media server used for the backup we can see sdbackup02 is used.  However, it would be more efficient to have used backup02, which is the local media server to the local dedupe appliance.  From what I can see, this backup job was created on the CASO.  What logic does the CASO use to pick a media server to use?  Also, could I just click on the check box to select the Media Server to fix this issue?  Are there any gotchas I need to be aware of?

Thanks again for your time!