Wow

[Jimmy_Andrews]

I had a couple of quick questions/concerns about the use of BE 2012, just general use questions because it is so different than BE 2010.  I wanted to call support because the Symantec tech support site is down for maintenance and I don't have the time today to troll through the forums and I need to get a successful backup completed.   But calling support I can't just get the answers really quick without creating a severity 1 ticket.  This isn't sev1 and I've been on the tech support side of things and I really disliked those customers saying they have a sev1 issue when they didn't.  My other option would be to be put in a queue and wait.  I don't have time or the schedule to do that, but it looks like I'll need to hit the internet.

1) How do I get the details of the exceptions thrown or the details of an error?  I can see that an exception happened and an error code, but unlike BE2010, I can't see to open the job log and find what specifically threw the exception.  Reports only give summary information and the Alerts are not much better.  Where the heck is that detailed information that BE2010 provided?!!!  A case to get rid of BE2012.

2) How can I configure a incremental backup to still fully backup SQL and Exchange?  Or is it really as tedious as creating a primary job that backs up the server sin Exchange or SQL and then creating an additional job that just backs up SQL or Exchange?  If it is the latter, that is not only a huge step backwards, but a case to get rid of BE2012.

3) A full systems backup is taking up DOUBLE the tapes that BE2010 would use with everything configured the same (for a full backup).  I have the compression option selected...another case to get rid of BE2012

So, reading https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/backup-exec-2012-sql-transaction-log-backups I learned a lot, mostly answering my questions above.

I want Symantec to pay attention to this...This is not a "disliking change thing" because I actually like the new layout.  This is about functionality and you have provided a product that is a step backwards from 2010.  I go from having one job total that encompassed all my servers and my Daily Incrementals, Weekly and Monthly Fulls, and Quarterly copies that used a single Job Selections List to needing to create many, many jobs now.  The overhead with the tape loading is outrageous and the apparent inability to see details about the jobs that just ran makes troubleshooting nearly impossible. 

I will wait for some responses, but I am currently leaning to uninstall this BE2012 and going back to 2010R3...

[Jimmy_Andrews]

Found out some solutions:

1) You need to actually run a report to get this information.  It is the Problem Files report.  Unfortunately, the report doesn't seem to be in any kind of order I would expect, so I actually need to search for the date the job was run/scheduled to run.

2) I need to create multiple, complicated jobs to do this, there isn't any way around it.  I can't select incremental but still fully backup Exchange and/or SQL.

3) I need to start from scratch and try again to get a clearer picture. EDIT: I figured out the reason why, I don't have the proper hotfixes applied yet.  Apparently the product was released with a bunk compression procedure.

Other issues I have problems with:

Since I need to create a whole ton load of jobs now with this new system, configuring the timing of it all is a mess.

This version has INCREASED backup management time, costing us more money.  All in all and taking into account the likely need to remove 2012 and put 2010 on and all the upgrade headaches, BE2012 has become the most expensive backup solution to date, costing us over $10,000 in resource time.  This is unacceptable in any case.

[GAG]

Hi Jimmy,

I agree with you: BExec 2012 seems a huge step backwars, actually I'm still using BExec 2010 and looking for other options in the market.

Regards,

[Jimmy_Andrews]

It appears that the concerns that I have had are not unique and there is promising news on the horizon for R2 of BE2012 (or SP2, not sure which one).  I have finally set up my system similar to how it was in BE2010 with a couple of exceptions.  Job creation is a bear still however and I only have 4 servers.  I can't imagine dozens or more.

If I were a betting man, I would say that their (Symantec's) intent was to make backing up something you don't need to think about.  The defaults are set to be overly conservative, backing up everything.  The consequence of this however is a lot of extra space needed for backing up, bad news if you are using tape.  Well, that is where their dedupe option would come in handy.  So to conclude, it seems that BE2012 was designed to be used with dedupe as a near-required addition.  That's great and all if their only customer base was 50+ servers, but after reading the forums, that is hardly the case.

[Jimmy_Andrews]

I have a request...When I'm changing the time to run an incremental backup, after a full backup already has been done and an iteration of said incremental, the backup will not run until the next full backup is done first.

If you are going to try and program 'intelligence' into the software, then it needs to be done fully.  I am finding that some of the 'smart' pieces of this version are really only smart at the surface but the actual behind the scenes logic programming is flawed.  This really scares me to speculate that there was a heafty portion of front-end programming and a less impressive logic backend.  If I can't trust the program, I really don't care how pretty it may look.

The DLO check before upgrade is a perfect example.  No one seems to know exactly where BE2012 checks for DLO but it does a seemingly broad stroke scan of DBs, Files, .ini's and Reg Keys, too broad in my opinion.