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Flashbackup troubles

grumpyface
Level 4
I have been trying for some time to get Flashbackup to work on Windows clients.

I have had occasional success but usually bpkar32.exe runs at about 20% and sends no data until the master server times out the connection and terminates the job with status code 41.

I have tried on Windows 2000 using VSP and Windows 2003 using VSP or VSS with the same result.

I am currently attempting to backup a 400GB partition on a Windows 2003 machine. The first attempt worked very quickly and backed it up in about 4 hours. Since then I have been getting mostly status 41. I have progressively increased the CLIENT_CONNECT and CLIENT_READ timeouts so that now they are set to 5000 and it still times out. I am able to use flashbackup on a smaller volume on the same machine.

Has anyone had any success using Flashbackup on Windows?

I am running NB 5.1 MP5 on all servers (Master/media servers are on Solaris)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
7 REPLIES 7

Alex_Vasquez
Level 6
During the backup process, can you check the windows client server to see if the vsp cache file gets generated? I would recommend, perhaps, enabling the BPTM log and restarting services to see if that offers more visibility into the error.

AKopel
Level 6
How many files does the filesystem have?
We had problems with anything over around 5 million and even called a ticket in.
Are you increasing the Client Read Timeout on the Master? That is the correct setting. The problem, is that it needs to generate a list of all the files for flashbackup, and with millions of files, it can take a LOOOONG time.. We had to bump our client timeout to around 10000 for it to work with some volumes....

AK

grumpyface
Level 4
Thanks, I have been asking Symantec how large a timeout I might expect and have not received a clear answer. It is helpful to know that it may simply be a timeout issue.

The system has between 1 and 5 million files at any given time, that is the reason I want to use Flashbackup. The regular file backups take up to 18h to complete.

I increased the timeouts on the master, media and client server.

It is odd though, that the first time I attempted to backup this volume it succeeded with the timeout set to only 300 and everytime since has failed even with the timeout set much larger.

grumpyface
Level 4
When I use the VSP snapshotting method I can see the .vsp file get created but it never grows.

I did not find anything in the bptm log, it is just waiting I think.

AKopel
Level 6
Have you tried using VSS as your snapshot method?
yea, you won't find anything in bptm... I think it would be in some other log on the client..
AK

Dennis_Strom
Level 6
http://www4.symantec.com/Vrt/offer?_requestid=393774&a_id=6570&
Backing Up the Human Genome Project File System: VERITAS NetBackup� FlashBackup

Not much there mostly hype but this says it can be done. Did see a doc that said to decrease the data block size in the flashbackup console. Also I think the first time it is quite slow after that it gets faster.

Dennis_Strom
Level 6
http://support.veritas.com/docs/279061
DOCUMENTATION: Why are file system restores are running very slow with large number of small