Netbackup 5.1 - duplicate backup running longer / hangs periodically

[sean_h]

Hi there,

I am after some advice for an old Veritas NB 5.1 version running on HP-UX and would appreciate some help and guidance please.

Just to clarify, i understand that this version is extremely old and unsupported but unfortunately, there is no appetite from the decision makers to allow for an upgrade as the servers this NB solution supports are due to go out of support by the end of this year we are told. But i digress.....

So, we have an overnight backup that completed, and then from 8am each day, we take duplicates of the overnight backups, to be sent offsite for offsite storage.

Typically, the "duplicate" run from 08:00 till approx 17:00 each day but a few days ago, the backup was only showing as being approx 50% completed by 22:30 so i cancelled it. We have seen a few of these delays recently but we are unable to spot any pattern so suspect technical difficulties somewhere in the backup solution. Data volumes have not increased - by and large they are stable

I have saved the following files from the server but frankly i'm not overly NB familiar so the contents mean little, although i have search for errors but can't seem to find anything of relevance :

        admin / bpbkar / bpbrm / bpcd / bplist / bprd / bpsched / bptm / hp-ux syslog

Also, i have saved screen shots from the Veritas NB job details which i have attached to this post which *seemed* to show no activity or stalling between 10:19:09 and 17:32:50

Would someone be able to give me some guidance as to what might be the issue please or some guidance as to any *classic* or *typical* things to check for and in which of the logfiles

Am happy to share any further logs or system config which may be of use and help get to the bottom of this.

Many thanks in advance

[RonCaplinger]

One suggestion to try:

Change the status of 4 of the tape drives in NetBackup to DOWN.

Run a large 6-stream backup job or series of jobs all at the same time, making sure they all take about 20-30 minutes so the streams get a chance to even out and give a meaningful average speed for each stream.  Make note of the speed of the backups to the two tape drives you still have.

When finished, UP those other 4 tape drives and run the exact same 6-stream backups and compare the backup speeds.  You will likely see that using fewer tape drives on a media server gives a much faster throughput than using all of the drives on one server.  If so, that is when you ask the bosses for money for additional server hardware.  And a software upgrade to a supported NetBackup version!