Off Site configuration question

[NoelT]

Hi, new member here.  I have had a look, but can't find what I'm looking for, so apologies if this has been asked already.

I'm trying to set the off site ftp up.  My question is, as we're having bandwidth issues, can I copy the v2i files to an external USB drive and then onto my backup server?

Basically, the v2i files are never finishing in time, so if I actually create the files on the ftp destination, will BESR just copy the update files, or does it insist that it creates all the files and will overwrite existing files?

I hope that makes sense??

Thanks in Advance...

[Haddock]

To DavidF. I have not tried what you suggested but I bet it would work, too much hazzle to test that just for the test. To Kiddbios. Yes no problem in copying using other tool, but to make this solution stable, usable and professional for our customers we want it to be as straight as possible to limit the possibilities for errors, and as mentioned Acronis does this trick very well so why cant symantec ?

[David_F]

As always I suggest those on this thread to use the HELP | Send Feedback option from within the product to let product development know the importance of this issue to you.

[Norfolk_n_Chanc]

Hi

Yes this works well, as long as BESR 'thinks' it's connecting to the same device name and sees the files it's expecting, then no problem.

All we are talking about is changing the IP Address.

However there is another issue here and that is if the  on-site storage device is not the same device as the BESR server then off-site copying is done at a much lower speed than you would expect, as it would seem that the BESR server first copies the data from the on-site storage device then copies it again to the off-site device. I now use ftp directly between the on-site and off-site devices with a four fold speed increase.

Steve

[Jon_R]

Has anyone else tried this solution?

[klang65]

don't know if anyone is still interested in this, but here is what I did to seed my off-site storage.
1. Locally I set up a Xenserver virtual machine with a USB attached drive and defined the share for off-site copy to use. I used DHCP for the IP addressing, and the UNC path always used just the host name.
2. I shut down the VM and copied it to another USB drive.
3. At the off-site location, I imported the VM from the second USB drive which retained the attached USB drive.
4. The powered up VM was the same machine with same USB drive and network share but with a different IP.
4. Subsequent incremental wrote correctly because the UNC path to the off-site storage was still retained.
5. I then migrated the USB storage via XenCenter to a new SAN location of the storage repository.
Since this took a long time (18 hours or so) I disabled backups for one day.
6. I then resumed normal backups and since the UNC path was identical for off-site storage, incremental resumed.

[Brian_Milnes]

I just posted another question regarding this process, and then using different search criteria, found this thread.
I had an abortive attempt at using DoubleTake to perform mirroring and replication, but gave up because of the same sort of problem - as soon as you moved the locally created mirror offsite, however minor the change might be (including a NAT route change) the mirroring process restarted.
My solution to this will be to take the remote server back on-site, do the backup locally (as if connected via the WAN using a Gigabit Router - emulating the VPN/WAN) and then take it off-site to carry on with the incrementals.
It's a pain in the neck/arse, but I'm pretty confident as a workaround.
After all this time, you'd imagine Symantec might have realised that this should have been featured already!
Brian

[TMonster]

We had a go at this and (due to project time constraints), just ditched the offsite functionality in place of RoboCopy... I've used that beast for so many things, it's always in the back of my mind for most file copies...

Admittedly, it doesn't do FTP - but the latest version (XP010 - from the Win2k3 res kit) has basic bandwidth adjustment, so we copy all of the local (on site) backups to USB drives using RoboCopy which mirrors the source to the destination (purging old files that BESR has deleted locally)

It can even remain memory resident - admittedly, I've not tried this last option with removable drives, but I have a feeling that I will be soon!

David F - our customer's systems don't have internet access (security reasons), so can I submit the Help/Feedback some other way? Email? Or would I have to join up to the Symbeta team you mentioned - (https://symbeta.symantec.com). That doesn't feel like my comments would be going to the correct place...

[Brian_Milnes]

I did the transfer yesterday:
1. Brought the offsite backup server back to HQ
2. Gave the W2K3 SBS server a second IP to match the VPN subnet of the backup server. Checked name resolution by pinging host names either way (initially, BESR wouldn't recognize the Backup destination).
3. Performed "normal" initial Backup (~2 hrs for 105Gb over Gigabit LAN card)
4. Shutdown Backup server, removed dual homed 2nd IP address from SBS server, returned Backup Server to Offsite location.
5. Once back on VPN, BESR recognized backup location and performed incremental backup.

Notes. The VPN connection appears to be causing some issue to BESR - I have seen several instances in last 24 hours saying Destination Unreachable (whereas the VPN appears to be fine). I may need to check VPN re-negotiate parameters.

Brian