Still having Issues

[ltjimster]

Hello,

In my backup Exec 12.5 I have 18 backup to disk folders made to backup to 3 separate folders on each of the 6 Buffalo Terastations 2 full backup and an Incremental backup, but i'm doing the same thing on another server because it takes to long to backup everything on one server so we had to split it between 2 servers. The last backup i tried to do said "Low Disk Space" on the Backup to Disk folder i scheduled to backup but there was more than an enough space for it backup to.

In the backup to disk folder Properties i've set all the folders for the "maximum size for backup to disk files" to the size of the amount we backup for a full backup 900GB, the "maximum number of backup sets per backup to disk file" which i put 2 and the "Concurrent jobs for this disk backup to disk folder" which i've put  2. But i'm guessing what to put because i dont understand it properly.

All i want to do is overwrite it next time it comes to it no questions asked because we can only really get a months worth of backup, I've set everything to overwrite. I've added a Screen Shot of what i've done.


 

Cheers
Jamie

[ltjimster]

Any Help would be appreciated, its quite urgent really. We're coming upto the point when we NEED to overwrite data.

Cheers
Jamie

[Colin_Weaver]

Unless your servers are using GRT backup processes, the way the overwrite of data works is based on a combination of the jobs settings (start with overwrite vs start with append) and the media set Overwrite Protection and Append Periods

Basically if you append to bkf files then when the media can be overwritten slides backwards - as it is based on when the last data was written to the BKF (which is the end of the last job to write to the media)

Also because the overwrite seeting depends on the end of the job, if you want a media to be used by a weekly job and then overwrirteen by the next weekly job then don't set an overwrirte protection of 7 days/1 week - as you need to subtract the length of time the original backup job took to run so set the overwrite protection to something like 6 days and it wil be overwriteable when the weekly job starts.

IMG folder removal (for GRT backups) does work a little differently in that at the start of every GRT set it will try and locate an overwriteable IMG folder to delete (so still uses the Media Set properties but is not as dependent on the job settings)

[ltjimster]

Is GRT backup Processes only for exchange servers because the 2 servers we're using for Backup Exec arent Exchange servers and we dont have any that are.

Well I want jobs to be overwriteen after a month of the backup file being made, i'm doing enough jobs to last a month before i have to overwrite anything.

So what should set me Overwite Protection Period and Append Periods to and what should set the Backup to disk Properties to please if that is part of the issue.

Cheers
Jamie

[ltjimster]

Anyone???

[JT_T · Accepted solution]

Max size for backup file, 900GB???

There's no point for doing that, because of the performance reasons. You might try to change settings between 2 to 10Gb per backup-to-disk-file size, to find the best performance. If you don't want to do that, just change the max file size to 4GB which is default setting.

Think about it; You have one 900GB backup file. Backup Exec knows what data is in your backup file, as it's cataloged by Backup Exec server. But, when you do need to restore files from your backups, still Backup Exec knows that ok, your files can be found from your 900GB backup file. BUT, Backup Exec doesn't know the exact location of the files you want to restore from your 900GB backup file. So Backup Exec needs to scan the whole 900GB backup file to find your files to restore them.

If you would split your backups to for example 5GB files, Backup Exec knows still knows where to find your files, only that when you want to restore something, Backup Exec would only need to scan 5GB file (or files if restoring plenty amount of data) and that would be quite more easier than scanning 900GB file.


Concurrent jobs, that's how many backup jobs you can run same time to your Backup-to-disk-folder. If you have there 2 as in your picture, you can run 2 jobs at same time to your B2D folder. You should not run jobs same time more than you have physical disks on your Backup-to-disk-folder device.
So, if you have Buffalo Terastation and for example 4 physical disks in it, you shouldn't run more than 4 jobs at same time, because of the performance reasons.

Backup Exec uses GRT only with Exchange, Active Directory, Sharepoint and VM backups. Not for basic file backups.


If you want to protect all your media, including Full and Incremental for one month, you should set overwrite protection to one month. If you want that your backup files gets overwritten after a month, you should set your media overwrite protection for example to one day less than month, because the overwrite protection period starts when backup is written to backup-to-disk or tape media.

And if you use for example 2 to 10GB backup files, you don't need to worry about append period that much.

[ltjimster]

Thank you very much JT_T thats really helped, your first person thats put it in simply terms for me lol.

So even though my full backup of everything on our network is about 900GB, by spliting that up running separate backups on 2 servers i should set my backup-to-disk-properties to a low Gigabyte, the lower the better for performance.

Should a tick the "allocate maximum number of backup sets perbackup to disk files" because they'll be quite a lot of them.

Thanks again
Jamie