EV 10.0.3 compatibility with BE 2012 SP2 query

[VirgilDobos]

Hello there,

I’m facing a pretty interesting challenge and wondering if any of you had similar experience recently..

According to the compatibility matrix, EV 10 is supported by BE 2012, but for 10.0.0, 10.0.1 and 10.0.2 only, while support for 10.0.3 is still pending. To me, this is quite weird as EV 10.0.3 was released in January 2013 and BE 2012 SP2 in August 2013, hence more than 6 months between them and both are Symantec products.

What is more strange is that, if you use EV 10 SP3 you are not able to back it up using Backup Exec 2012 by any means, not even using the normal Windows agent with PowerShell scripts. If you have at least an Application & DB license (same used for EV) installed on your backup server (say for a SQL server), when you install the backup agent on the EV/SQL server and try to configure the policy (normal windows backup), it will detect the EV directory and will grey-out all EV service locations and not allow you to select them for backup.

Did any of you get across with similar situation? If so, what workarounds have you used?

PS: We have logged a case with Support (BE team) and they are confirming the above functionality, and that there is no solution at the moment.

Thanks,

[RahulG]

Thought the Support for 10 sp3 is pending , did you attempt to backup EV with backup exec 2012 ? If yes Did the backup failed ? if failed what was the error ?

Did you enabled backup mode in EV before backing up using the windows agent ?  IF you are not using the EV agent for backup you need to make the selection for the databases by browsing the SQL server.

[VirgilDobos]

Hi Rahul,

I don't remember the exact error we get when using the BE EV agent and I do not have access to the systems. 

When using the normal windows agent, we are able to select the partitions where the EV data is located, but the actual folders inside are greyed-out and we cannot select/unselect them. The backup completes succesfully, but nothing is actually backed-up. We are using the powershell scripts to set/clear EV backup mode.

For the SQL DBs, we are using the SQL agent and the backups work just fine. 

Cheers,

[RahulG]

Let me know what is the error you get when run backup using the Ev agent ?

The remote agent detects that EV is installed on the systema and hence does not perform the backup.

[Fiona]

Hi Virgil,

I upgraded my test lab to 10.0.3 and I have Backup Exec 2012 SP2 and I have been unable to get it working.

The errors vary between E000848C, E000FE30, E0009502, E000846B and there is not consistency, I had a call logged with support and they were unable to resolve the issue, they did try their best though.

One odd thing was that 3 random times the backup would work!!! (no changes had been made).

We are now looking into an alternative backup solution as we cannot upgrade our production environment.

[Prone2Typos]

I think I saw a posting on another forum recently (may have even been started by you) that stated that this is not working and they are looking into how to expidite a fix for it. Last I knew this was not yet compatible.

[VirgilDobos]

Thank you all for sharing your experience / feedback.

We are looking further for an immediate fix from Symantec as we have two customers facing this situation.

[VirgilDobos · Accepted solution]

Hello guys,

A quick update in here. We were able to backup EV by disabling the Agent by following below steps:

1. On the EV servers, stop 'Backup Exec Remote Agent Service'

2. Go to path where remote agent is installed (for ex. Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\..)

3. Rename bedsev.dll (for ex: bedsev_renemed.dll)

4. Start 'Backup Exec Remote Agent' service.

Hope this helps other people having the same issue.

Virgil