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Backups failing with Status 196: client backup was not attempted because backup window closed

saqibhussain
Level 3

Hi,

We are facing trouble in daily/weekly/monthly backup on tape drive, however it is being done on the server itself.

I would like to request you to help me in resolving this issue.

please find attached the snapshot of the error.

Capture 1.PNGCapture 2.PNG

quick response highly appreciated.

 

Regards,

Saqib

3 ACCEPTED SOLUTIONS

Accepted Solutions

Marianne
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There is honestly nothing that anybody can do for you to fix your issues. 

If you have only one standalone tape drive, you need to understand how NetBackup selects media with Standalone drive, how NBU does not mix retention levels on media/tapes, etc.

You can read through these topics in NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume II

How NetBackup selects media
About selecting media in standalone drives

You should go to your management with 2 proposals:

1. Employ night-shift operator to monitor tape requests and load tape in drive.
2. Purchase a small tape library

Explain the risk with the current situation - low backup success rate, missed backups, inability to restore, etc.

View solution in original post

Marianne
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No. It is not recommended to enable multiple retentions on media. 

It only helps in the short-term and you will eventually sit with a bunch of tapes that cannot be reused.

If you have Retention 3 and 9 (Infinity) on the same tape, you will never be able to reuse this tapes once it fills up. 
ALL images on a tape must expire before the tape can be overwritten/resused.

I have given you my recommendations. 
I have nothing else to contribute here.

View solution in original post

Hi saqibhussain,

As per you the schedule is different, so you probably can load the tape as per the schedule backup.

Let say

Tape               Backup Type                Schedule                                                 Action                   

A0001             Daily                              10:00 PM (Mon-Fri)                        Load tape A0001 in Drive at 9:30 PM

A0002             Weekly                          10:00 pm (Sat)                                Load tape A0002 in Drive at 09:30 pm (Sat) 

A0003              Monthly                        10:00 pm (Last day of month)          Load tape A0003 in Drive at 09:30 pm (Last day of month) 

I agree, this is really a manual task to be done.

However this can solve your problem, until you get new Tape Library or autoloader.

 

Regards.

 

View solution in original post

17 REPLIES 17

Michael_G_Ander
Level 6
Certified

You need to look at your backup window versus your backup performance. Look in the planing guide and performance tuning guide to get an indication of what should be possible in your infrastructure from clients to media server.

Cannot tell if your performance or lack thereof is related to your tape drive(s).

The standard questions: Have you checked: 1) What has changed. 2) The manual 3) If there are any tech notes or VOX posts regarding the issue

Hello Michael,

We checked the duration of our Backup window versus size. The configurations were given as per policies set by the system OEM, who have implemented similar settings in other clients facilities. I've attached screenshots of the backup window configurations.

 

The daily backup is a differential incremental type, and the weekly and monthly are full backups. Additionally, the policies have been created for tape and server backups, the start times do not clash, however, the server backups are carried out succesfully (only Monthly and Weekly exist for the server).

 

To directly answer your questions:

1) Nothing has changed.

2) We checked the manual, and the configurations are the same as when the backups were working.

3) Previous posts referred to include the following link:  http://www.veritas.com/docs/000040912

 

With regards to point 3), when the problem was not resolved, we resorted to restarting the server. That didn't help either.

 

Thanks,

Saqib Hussain

Marianne
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You sent another screenshot to me via PM that you seemingly forgot to post here.

That is the most important one as it shows what is wrong:

Capture 3.PNG

You need to understand the data transfer path to solve this, the backup(s) will never be faster than the slowest part of the path.

Still think you should do the calculation as described in the planning guide to know if your windows are reaslistic.

Are you totally sure nothing as changed ? in my experience 99% of times when working backups suddenly fail, something has changed. Can be something so simple as increased data amount on the clients

The standard questions: Have you checked: 1) What has changed. 2) The manual 3) If there are any tech notes or VOX posts regarding the issue

Marianne
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When I look at your Storage Unit name and the media-id, it seems that you have a standalone tape drive where you must manually load tapes before the backup starts, right?

We see that NetBackup was waiting for media-id A00005 to be insterted in the drive.

Nobody did it, so the backup eventually failed with 196 when the window closed. 

In all honesty - you have the best of the best backup products that works best where everything is automated - a tape library with sufficient media where NBU can load suitable media in tape drive for a backup and automatically returns the tape to robot slot when backup is finished.

 

Genericus
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As Marianne says, the problem is caused by injecting manual processes in an automated environment.

I see this in my environment when users try to start a restore using a tape that is at Iron Mountain, it just sits there waiting for the tape to be loaded.

The nice thing about 196 errors, is that you can fix the issue, then right click and restart the job and it will still work.

 

NetBackup 9.1.0.1 on Solaris 11, writing to Data Domain 9800 7.7.4.0
duplicating via SLP to LTO5 & LTO8 in SL8500 via ACSLS

Hello Ms Marianne,

Thanks for asking.

Please find attached errors snapshots of daily, weekly backups.

 

Best Regards,

Saqib Hussain

Marianne
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As per my previous post - for Daily backup NBU was waiting for media id A00005 to be loaded in the drive.
Nobody did that.
Job stayed queued, waiting for tape to be loaded in the drive until the backup window closed.

For Weekly backup, the 'maximum job count has been reached' and this job remained queued. It eventually failed as it never got a chance in the queue...
Is multiplexing enabled in Storage Unit Properties and in the Schedules?

Without MPX enabled, only one job can run at a time to your standalone drive and the rest will be queued.

You need to show the result of having a single, standalone tape drive to your management. 
You clearly have more jobs than your resources can handle. 
You need a tape library in this environment. 

 

Hi Marianne,

Thanks for your response, before i start the discussion i would like to let you know that we have changed the tape drive for daily and weekly backup before and probably by that time only the backup stopped.

however as per your last reply we have changed back the media ID to A00005 and the weekly backup started successfully and is done but the daily backup is failing and is looking for the media ID A00007, for monthly i beleive the tape drive using Media ID-A00008 but it is also not being done when we tried manually.

also when we changed the Media ID to A00007 then weekly backup stopped and then Daily gets done successfully when we tried to do manual backup.

please find attachment for the daili and weekly backup, please let ,me know if you need something additional for the analysis. i have also attached the media ID details snapshot.

once again thanks for your support.

Regards,

Saqib

Marianne
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There is honestly nothing that anybody can do for you to fix your issues. 

If you have only one standalone tape drive, you need to understand how NetBackup selects media with Standalone drive, how NBU does not mix retention levels on media/tapes, etc.

You can read through these topics in NetBackup Administrator's Guide, Volume II

How NetBackup selects media
About selecting media in standalone drives

You should go to your management with 2 proposals:

1. Employ night-shift operator to monitor tape requests and load tape in drive.
2. Purchase a small tape library

Explain the risk with the current situation - low backup success rate, missed backups, inability to restore, etc.

Hello Marianne,

 

Please find attached snapshot,

Is this recommended we can enable this option on our Master Server.

It will not impact on our backup schedules?

 

Best Regards,

Saqib

quebek
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Hi

While it is possible to enable multiple retention per media it is not recommended setting. I would try to avoid this as much as only possible. Better please invest in the autoloader or some disks as workign with stand alone tape drive is a nightmare and having NBU working with stand alone drive is a waste of money on NBU - my take.

Marianne
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No. It is not recommended to enable multiple retentions on media. 

It only helps in the short-term and you will eventually sit with a bunch of tapes that cannot be reused.

If you have Retention 3 and 9 (Infinity) on the same tape, you will never be able to reuse this tapes once it fills up. 
ALL images on a tape must expire before the tape can be overwritten/resused.

I have given you my recommendations. 
I have nothing else to contribute here.

Marianne
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My absolute last post on this matter....

Please go through this blog and Andy's reply:

https://vox.veritas.com/t5/Backup-Recovery-Community-Blog/Understanding-how-NetBackup-writes-to-a-ta...

Hope this helps...

Hi saqibhussain,

As per you the schedule is different, so you probably can load the tape as per the schedule backup.

Let say

Tape               Backup Type                Schedule                                                 Action                   

A0001             Daily                              10:00 PM (Mon-Fri)                        Load tape A0001 in Drive at 9:30 PM

A0002             Weekly                          10:00 pm (Sat)                                Load tape A0002 in Drive at 09:30 pm (Sat) 

A0003              Monthly                        10:00 pm (Last day of month)          Load tape A0003 in Drive at 09:30 pm (Last day of month) 

I agree, this is really a manual task to be done.

However this can solve your problem, until you get new Tape Library or autoloader.

 

Regards.

 

quebek
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NBU and stand alone tape drive is like having a Ferrari Laferrari and instead of riding it we do push it from point A to B becasue we do not have money for fuel - lol, sorry by I could not resist to share this comparsion with you

Thanks all of you.

 

I apologise to all if my posts annoyed anybody but I'm new at this and still learning. I have learnt a lot from your responses and sincerely appreciate them. I have submitted your analysis to my management for further considerations.

 

Best Regards.