Newbie confused: no recovery points showing

[KeithXP]

I have BESR 2010 installed on a SBS2008 box. I have two 'full computer' backup jobs set up so far: 1. Backs up to an external USB drive. Runs every two hours with a new recovery point weekly. Destination is automatically managed. 2. Backs up to a NAS drive. Runs weekly with only one recovery point stored. Both backups are running without errors. However, if I go into 'Manage backup destination' and list the USB drive, I see no recovery point sets, but if I list the NAS storage, I see a recovery point as expected. But if I start a Recover Files and Folder operation, all the recovery points on the USB drive are listed, so they are there. I suspect I am being a bit dense here, but can anyone explain why no recovery point sets are showing on the USB drive? thanks

[Markus_Koestler]

My tip is that this is a bug and you'd better file a case with Symantec. You might get a hotfix for this issue.

[KeithXP]

Finally managed to speak to tech support (software had not been registered yet), and he remoted into our server and reproduced the behaviour. After a quick check, he said he couldn't see recovery points sets using 'Tools>Manage Backup Destination" on his system either! He offered no explanation as to why they do appear when the NAS destination is selected, but don't appear when the USB destination is selected, but assured me my backups were sound. I hope he is right because we have an as yet unresolved (case open with Dell Pro Support) issue causing BSOD's on the server!

[criley]

I'm backing up directly to a USB drive and can see all my recovery points when looking in 'Manage Backup Destination'. My guess is that the issue may be specific to the USB drive you are using.

Can you view/open the recovery points on your USB drive if you use the recovery point browser?

[Jon_Sumida]

I've seen this behavior in our environment as well. It's not unique to just a particular USB drive from my experience. We have multiple models/brands and I see this. I do the same thing with each drive, I format them in Windows disk management to NTFS and attach as local drive "F:" or "G:".  Backups all run successfully and can be viewed in recovery point browser. Backups show in history as well. Just none in the "Manage Backup Destination" section.

[criley]

Jon,

That's interesting to hear - can you provide a screenshot of exactly what you do see in Manage Backup Destination?

Can you also provide more details about what you are backing up and exactly how the job is configured?

[Jon_Sumida]

Some screen shots of 2 different USB external drives in my environment. Both NTFS and both being reported as successfully backed up. Both are configured as follows:

- Recovery point set

- Scheduled to run weekdays @ 11pm, new recovery point set @ weekly

- no event triggers

- High compression, number of recovery point sets set to 2

That's it. Pretty simple setup.

Here's a screen shot of a PC in the same environment, only this time it's backing up to our HP NAS server:

Here's the status of the same drive G: from above. Only thing I note is that the the Backup Destination pie chart shows my backup data as "Other Used Space". I have nothing else on this drive but BESR backup files.  But even on my BESR installations that install to our NAS and actually do show something in the "Manage Backup Destination" window, this still says "Other Used Space". I've never seen it display as "Backup Data".

[criley]

Jon,

There are some issues there that need investigating. I would encourage you to open a case with support so that this can be looked at in more detail.

[Jon_Sumida]

Chris - KeithXP looks like he already contacted Symantec Support and didn't get anywhere with this issue. I doubt I would either. My other problem is that with other BESR 2010 issues I've had, Support has always wanted me to upgrade to SP2 first to see if it resolved any/all issues. But as was documented in one of my past threads, attempting to upgrade to SP2 completely hoses my installation to a non-working state. I had an ongoing case with advanced support from Symantec and the final conclusion was to start a fresh install and rebuild all my policies from scratch.

My plan now is to just band aid my BESR 2010 for as long as I can and install SSR on another VM and see if I can get it working better and then slowly convert. Not looking forward to it to be honest...

[criley]

Chris - KeithXP looks like he already contacted Symantec Support and didn't get anywhere with this issue. I doubt I would either.

If you are having problems with a case going 'nowhere' - just point the engineer towards this post and ask them to contact me directly about this issue. From what you have told me so far, this does sound like a defect to me but it needs further investigation.

My other problem is that with other BESR 2010 issues I've had, Support has always wanted me to upgrade to SP2 first to see if it resolved any/all issues. But as was documented in one of my past threads, attempting to upgrade to SP2 completely hoses my installation to a non-working state.

But this issue is with BESR, not BESR-MS. From memory, you had problems with SP2 for BESR-MS specifically right? You should be able to easily install SP2 for BESR without issue...

[Jon_Sumida]

Yes the issue was with BESR-MS to SP2. I never considered updating SP2 to just the clients, but not the BESR-MS.  How can I do this to 100+ clients? Would I replace the update package with SP2 to deploy via BESR-MS?

[Markus_Koestler]

Yep.