10-10-2011 09:55 AM
We have just upgraded to NetBackup 7.1 from 7.0.1 and now 2 of our Windows Flash Backup policies are backing up unused white space. These are not VCB backups.
When we were using 7.0.1 this wasn't happening. Any idea if there is a setting change that I need to make somewhere to stop this from happening?
Thanks in advance.
10-10-2011 12:37 PM
I assume you are talking about vstorage backups. You have to enable 'exclude unused and deleted blocks'.
10-10-2011 12:41 PM
The setting to exclude these is found under the snapshot opions section - accessed from the Attributes tab of the policy
10-10-2011 01:04 PM
I don't have that option available. When I go to the snapshot options section, at the top it says Auto and there are no other options. When I hit the drop down, my other options other than Auto are VSP, VSS or VxVM. We aren's using an off-host backup with this client.
Thanks.
10-11-2011 04:14 AM
On a normal FlashBackup-Windows policy, you can not exclude white spaces. Only VCB/vStorage Backups allow you to exclude white spaces.
It is an entire raw device dump.
10-11-2011 06:17 AM
That is what I thought, but in 7.0.1 it wasn't backing up the whitespace. The policies are setup exactly the same in 7.1 as they were in 7.0.1. Any idea why it would've been working in 7.0.1 and not in 7.1?
10-11-2011 07:02 AM
Flashbackup always writes the white spaces.
Did you check the previous backups?
10-11-2011 07:15 AM
I am curious about your 7.0.1 experience...
I have been working with FlashBackup since it first came out for Solaris clients. I have never seen it NOT backing whitespace (except when used with VMware backups).
It has always been pointed out in the manuals that FlashBackup was better suited for near-full volumes because it does a block-level backup of the raw device.
In the 7.0 Snapshot Client Admin Guide (there wasn't a new doc for 7.0.1) FlashBackup is recommended for the following scenarios:
■ the file system contains a large number of files
■ and most of the file system blocks are allocated
10-11-2011 07:24 AM
Yeah, I double-checked them and it definately wasn't backing up the whitespace in 7.0.1. We are just trying to figure out if there is a setting somewhere that we missed.
10-11-2011 07:29 AM
I agree and that is why we find it strange, that the old version for whatever reason wasn't backing up the whitespace. We were just comparing our backups after the upgrade and we noticed the difference in backup sizes post upgrade and we are trying to figure out why. I was wondering if there was a setting somewhere that we were missing.
10-17-2011 08:42 AM
I changed this backup job to a MS Windows backup and it is still backing up the whitespace.
10-17-2011 08:55 AM
A normal Windows backup cannot backup white space
If you are basing this on the Disk usage compared to how much data is backed up then i think you will find that some or all of you drive is compressed
Check out the difference between Size and Size On Disk
10-17-2011 09:33 AM
I agree with Mark - NOT POSSIBLE.
MS-Windows policy backs up NTFS filesystem.
Please post Client's bpbkar log as well as screenshot of drive letter properties.
10-17-2011 11:38 AM
I backup 2 drives
drive 1 has 25 GB used of 295 GB (size and size on disk are virtually the same)
drive 2 has 810 GB used of 2 TB (size and size on disk differ by 8 GB
NBU is backing up approx 2.3 TB's
How do I get the bpbkar log file?
10-17-2011 11:50 AM
Create the bpbkar folder under ...\netbackup\logs on the client. Log file will be created next time a backup runs.
10-17-2011 11:56 AM
10-17-2011 12:19 PM
Drive 1: Size = 24.6 GB Size on Disk = 25.2 GB
Drive 2: Size = 793 GB Size on Disk = 801 GB
10-19-2011 02:55 AM
Do you have any mount points on these drives - either something is getting backed up twice or there is something linking esle where.
Try, depending on what drive letters they are:
dir E:\ /s
Scripts etc are also available, see here for a tip:
http://thenonapeptide.blogspot.com/2010/04/listing-all-volume-mount-points-on.html