BESR 8.5 Desktop Edition - purging rec. points?

[MIXIT]

Hi all,

I'm attempting to evaluate the Desktop Edition of this product for deployment to a network with XP machines and my testing is currently on just one of those PCs, with a locally attached Iomega REV (USB) 35GB drive. 

Also, I've never used BESR before so am using the trial version which appears to be fully functional but I'm not seeing any settings anywhere that specify to purge/delete older backup files (reocvery points).  I've been running it for a few days now, so on the REV disk it's showing a few files...*.v2i which appear to be the base (full backup) files, *.iv2i which are variable sized and appear to be the Incremental files, and a single *.sv2i which is probably some kind of catalog file (?).  But space on this removable disk is almost out, so I wonder how it will behave when it does run out?  

I've been through all the settings in defining the backup job and read their corresponding meanings in the user guide but still find myself unsure of how this software manages disk space. 

Bottom line:  Will it get rid of an older backup file once it knows the newer file needs to be written?  Or will something else happen, such as a prompt for new media or perhaps just an error saying the disk is full?  

In case there is a potential workaround or something that somebody can suggest, the intended backup schedule is simply a Monday to Friday daily backup (Dailly Full would be ideal), where the user has 5 "tapes" (REV disks) and will put Monday's tape in on Monday, Tuesday's tape on Tuesday, etc., and not have to worry about backup file management.  There's no archive backups being done, they just need to be able to get back to one of the previous 5 days if a restore is needed. 

If there isn't a simple way to accomplish this then I'll have to move on to a different product.  But I like the looks of this one so I hope there's a management solution to be had!  Thanks all. 

PS:  I've searched/read previous posts relating to this topic but they (mostly, if not all) appear to be for the Server Edition - either way they already assumed a lot of product knowledge but in my case I'm new and need the top-down basics sorted out first. 

[Andreas_Horlach]

Mixit -

When you setup your job, there is an option to designate the number of recovery point sets to save. In this screenshot from my laptop, it is set to to retain 2 backup sets. Once there are 2 backup sets created, the next backup job will create the 3rd backup then delete the oldest backup set once the newest backup is complete, ensuring that you have 2 complete backups at any given time. As a note, the destination needs room for 3 complete backups.

If you plan on rotating your disks each day (M-F), you will need to set up 5 separate jobs - one for each day. This is because backup jobs are tied to the actual media that the backup image is being saved to, so the Monday job is going to try to find the exact disk that you set the job to backup to.

If your goal is to have an offsite backup, one idea is to use the  offsite feature. This allows you to create a backup (network drive, USB, etc), then BESR will copy that backup to a secondary and/or third location. This offsite feature allows you to set the offsite sync to occur to a drive letter, URL, etc, and it does not care about exact media. So when a disk is put into the Iomega drive, the offsite would sync with the original backup location.

Hope that all makes sense. Let me know if you have any other questions.

[MIXIT]

Hi Andreas,

Thanks very much for the info.  So just on the removable media alone, I guess I would set up 1 job per day and probably just stick with one backup set per job thereby having in effect one active backup per disk per day. I guess the software wants to see a successful backup completed before it'll purge the previous set so I'll need to ensure disk space is available to contain two full backups or it'll all fall apart.  I think that makes sense so I'll go ahead and configure it and give it 6 business days so I can see next Thursday how the file management takes place on the tonight's backup.   


Initially my concern with the "limit # of backup sets" option was that after reaching said limit, the backup job would never generate a backup again . I want this backup job (or these 5 jobs now) to run continuously without intervention for say the next year or two (or whatever). 

If you can sense in my wording that I might not have a clear picture in my summary of understanding above just let me know, otherwise I'll see you in a week. 

Thanks again!

[MIXIT]

It's been a couple weeks but I"m just getting back to this issue now. 

I haven't used the Offisite feature but I did create 5 backup jobs, one for each day M-F, and configured each identically to create only 1 Recovery Point.  The REV Drive's disks are 35GB.  If I do a manual rec. point using the highest compression, the file ends up at about 13GB so I was thinking it should be ok fitting two on there, one being the old one and one being the new one just created. 

FYI, these are full system backups not the "file and folder" one, and also during job creation I specified it to be the Independent Recovery Point option, not the one above which I can't recall at present but will try to double-check once my user inserts the REV disk (with no disk in the drive, I can't configure the destination thus can't get past that screen to check the other settings). 

I was setting Event ID 100 on Friday's backup attempt, description as follows: 

Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Backup Exec System Recovery
Event Category: Medium Priority
Event ID: 100
Date:  10/16/2009
Time:  11:16:55 PM
User:  N/A
Computer: ***
Description:
Error EC8F17E5: Your recovery point location of I:\ is running out of space. Please run the Cleanup Recovery Points task to free up some space. Error ED800013: Operation cancelled by user. Error ED800016: The target disk is full. Error EBAB03F1: Not enough storage is available to complete this operation.
Details:
Source: Backup Exec System Recovery


So I'll try to find this Cleanup Recovery Points task and see what I can do with it, but since it wasn't an available option during backup job creation, I suspect it's a one-time item and won't function as an auto-prunning option?  

Either way, Andreas, any thoughts on why it didn't remove the older rec. point as you had mentioned in your post above?  Was it because I choose the Independent Recovery Point option instead of whatever the one above it was? 

 

[MIXIT]

Well, there's no Cleanup Recovery Points task anywhere in this product that I can see.  Bearing in mind this is BESR 8.5 Desktop Edition, not Server Edition but that shouldn't matter since the error is coming from the installed version of BESR 8.5 DE...


Am I just barking up the wrong tree with this Desktop Edition product?  :) I just need software that will do a full system backup on Win XP machines from Monday to Friday, using daily rotation of Iomega REV disks and for it to delete the older backup files in order to free up space for the subsequent backup.  

I get a strong feeling this product isn't designed for that type of thing - from the fact that the BESR service itself locks down the drive, requiring me to create a "net stop service" batch file to run daily so the user can eject the disk, to this lack of ability to auto-delete older backup files. 

I really like the design of the product so I hope it's just that I'm missing some steps.  Please let me know, thanks! 

[loganjf]

MIXIT,

I am not sure about the differences between BESR 8.5 DE and Server Editions, but I can only imagine that they would be very similar.

Insufficient space - This is occurring because the base image you advised was 13gb in size. If you keep 2 sets of backups then by the time it writes the 3rd it would have filled up the drive. It only removes the oldest snapshot file after the most recent successful backup.

In the software itself you should have a menu selection called Manage Backup Destination. It is in here that you can right click on the sets that have been created and click cleanup, which will get rid of the oldest sets of snapshots.

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Jon Logan.

[MIXIT]

Hi Jon,

I double-checked and confirmed that I'm only creating 1 Recovery Point (under the Options window where a checkbox states: Limit the number of recovery points saved for this backup - Maximum = 1).  In my mind that should mean that it saves only one copy when all is said and done (that is, it writes the current backup, then deletes the older one resulting in one backup on disk).  Or does it mean that it'll handle the current backup as described but will also retain 1 older copy, thus at all times there are 2 backups on there and space is needed for a 3rd for the swap cycle?  

Also what's interesting is that when I go to Edit Settings... on say, Monday's backup job, and then click Next on the 2nd screen (Backup Destination screen), a Yes/No box pops up saying "Without compression, the recovery point will not fit in this destination...".  What's interesting is that I already have compression set to High (hence the 26.x GB C drive gets compressed down to a 13GB backup file) so clearly the software it checking space availability at that point in the setup and advising accordingly, but what I wonder is if perhaps that same detection code is occuring during the backup itself, and instead of just going ahead with the backup with Copmpression = High like I set, it just stops and ejects the REV disk saying space is full. 


I think that behaviour would therefore be a bug but if that's not what's happening, then I believe I'm at a loss :) 

There was a bit of confusion with my test user about disk rotation though, so a couple times a disk hadn't even been inserted which might account for the "lack of space" errors too though thus tonight will be the confirmed test of this auto-pruning feature. 

Right now Thursday's backup disk has been inserted.  In My Computer (WinXP) the drive's total space is 32.5GB and the available free space is 19.7GB, so plenty remaining for one more 13GB backup file.  Browsing onto the drive itself confirms that there is currently just one backup file of about 13GB and it's 2KB sv2i file so everything looks set to run smoothly tonight (11PM backup time). 

However what's odd is that the software's Home screen, where it shows the basic Backup Status on top and the desintation space usage pie chart on the bottom shows that 100% of the space is Free Space when it's clearly not.  Also the status portion at the top has the big green circle with the white check saying Backed Up even though the Thursday backup job hasn't successfully run since Oct 1, so it's failed like twice between now and then.  And while I'm at it, oddly enough on the right side next to this big green "Backed Up" indication is a message saying I have not yet defined a Files and Folder backup.  I have no need for this since I"m doing a full computer backup of C drive already - kind of odd that it thinks I should do both? 

Anwyay, it seems to me this whole Home screen status indictor thingy is buggy.  I've learned long ago not to trust summarized status screens in anybody's software so I'm not really that concerned as long as I can verify things in the background, but if anybody has any thoughts on this I'm still interested in hearing them. 

So mainly I want to verify that the # of recovery points on the Options screen should be either 0 or 1 if my intent is to never have more than one Recovery Point on disk at the completion of a Independent Recovery Point backup job, and will test tonight if the software is truly not working or did I just have problems because my user wasn't switching disks. 

Thanks Jon, Andreas, and/or anybody else that comments!  :)

[MIXIT]

Ok I just spotted an option that a: I feel stuipd for not noticing, but b: it was Disabled (unchecked) by default so what's up with that. 

After going to the Manage Backup Destination option under the Tools sidebar icon, I am brought to Clean Up Recovery Points screen.  Listed there are a handful of various rec points.  First off and real quick, I don't understand how this software tracks these things.  Some of the rec. points in the Status column say Available, and some don't, yet the REV Disk inserted has but one single Recovery point file present.  And any time in the past when I've manuall deleted files off a REV disk, I completely removed all files including any catelogue files, so is this perhaps being stored also in a subfolder of the BESR software?  Probably.  Well anyway, the option that is unchecked that I imainge governs this whole auto-deletion behavior is: 

"Automatically optimize without prompting me". 

FWIW, I've never seen a prompt asking me to optimize anything, but it seems like this would be the option that dictates whether BESR will automatically remove backup files?  

I'll put a checkmark in it but can someone confirm if this is just for rec. point list management or is this actually for optimizing (deleting) recovery point backup files?