Manage Backup Destination

[metincit]

I have moved my BESR (Windows Server edition) backups from my file server to my media server. Now it still has the old backup destination as the default and incorrectly reports that I have missed backups. The only way I have found to delete the old destination is in TECH87408 and boy is that a crappy solution! Not only do you get rid of your old destination, but you wipe out you new one and your entire history. Obviously somebody overlooked an important design feature. Who would ever think about moving or changing their backup destination? I've even gone as far as recreating the original destination folder but it still has all of the options grayed out in manage backup destination. Even if I copy the backup files from another location it still doesn't seem to see them.

<sarcasm>Surely it must be a design feature.</sarcasm>

Anybody have any other ideas?

David

[Jon_Sumida]

I did something similar. I changed my backup destination to another server with a different IP address. I went into the policy and changed the backup destination there. Initially it looked like everything was fine, but when the policies updated that night and the backups tried to run, they all got hung up. None of them finished the only thing I can point to is that change in backup destination that I made.

Hopefully this won't happen to you. But I think you can just open the backup policy and edit the backup destination part to reflect the change you made. You might have to clear out the history files though and that's what I wanted to avoid. Basically it seems like to change the backup destination you have to start your backups from scratch.

[criley]

I have moved my BESR (Windows Server edition) backups from my file server to my media server.

What exactly do you mean by this? Can you explain in detail?

Jon Sumida:

I think your situation is different; correct me if I'm wrong but you are talking about BESR-MS right? The original poster does not mention BESR-MS or policies...

[metincit]

We do not use the management component as we only have about a dozen installs.

When I say I "moved" my backups I mean I moved the backup destination to another server. As stated above, I moved them from my file server to my media server where all the other backups are initiated. It's much easier to manage things from the media server as I can reboot it most any time I don't have a backup running which is usually off hours anyway. It is much more difficult to find a time I can reboot my file server as someone or something is using it pretty much 24/7.

So now when I log on to one of my servers BESR will pop up a message in the system tray and tell me that it has missed a backup even though the icon in the system tray has the check mark indicating it has not. Then when I open up BESR the status says everything is backed up.

But if I go to Tools and select Manage Backup Destination I get a pop up window that says "This destination is currently unavailable. If this destination is an external device..." Then when I hit OK it comes up with a mostly grayed out window and in the Drives drop down it shows my old destination from the file server and I have to open the list and select my current destination server to see the recovery points.

I guess it's more of an annoyance than anything, but in my humble opinion, with almost 30 years in IT and half of that in software development, this is a basic, and easily implemented, feature that should be in the software. That is the ability to manage your backup destinations (add, move, delete) from the Manage Backup Destination window. But for some reason if the folders/shares no longer exists with actual recovery sets in them, you cannot do anything with them and they remain there as ghosts that you can't touch.

[criley]

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds as though you moved the recovery points 'outside' of BESR. For BESR to keep track of the recovery points, you MUST do this inside the GUI by going to the 'Manage Backup Destination' screen, selecting the drive and clicking on Move.

[metincit]

Actually I did not move any recovery points. I simply discontinued using one destination and started using a new one. I did this by simply editing each of the recovery jobs on each server and choosing a new destination in the edit job wizard.

[criley]

I may have to test this here when I have more time but it should be simple:

1. Move backup destination via the Manage Backup Destination screen
2. Modify your backup jobs to point to the new destination

[Jon_Sumida]

Chris
 - yes you are correct, I am talking about BESR-MS in my case. Sorry for the confusion. Changing my backup destination is pretty much what started me down the bad path I am currently on now.