cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Random changes to and failures of backup jobs

alex_rose
Level 4
I have 2 servers using BESR to backup to a DR server.

Sometimes the backup jobs will not run and there will be no entry for that day in the status page to say why, there will simply not be an icon there. Has anybody else come across this problem?

I've also had occasions when a new base image is scheduled to be created and it just does an incremental. When a base image is missed should it not be automatically scheduled for the next backup or does the software simply wait for the next scheduled base image (1 month in my case)? If it does not automatically do a base image on the next backup if it has missed doing one can this behaviour be implemented somehow - I do not want to have to keep checking these things manually.

Finally is there a way to increase the level of error/activity logging. I have 2 servers backing up each also being backed up to 2 offsite locations. I would like to be able to diagnose why I never get a day when both servers successfully back up to the onsite and both offsite locations. Each day there is at least one failure and each day it is different, how do I diagnose this using the tools provided with this software?
22 REPLIES 22

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   
I know the first 2 problems you describe very well, I also randomly face them. sad

I tackle the first problem by checking the last modified date of the v2i file of the server. Our backups are run daily, so in case the last modified date more than 1 day in the past, I know that the service has just hung. I just restart or kill the services.

The second problem is difficult to tackle. In theory, or at least as far as I understand the documentation, if a full backup was missed, the next time the backup job should to the full backup. In pratice my approach was to delete and re-create the backup job with a different day for the full backup, which in my case solved the problem. If I re-created the backup job with the full backup on the same day as before, the problem was still there.

As I don't use offsite copy I  can't contribute to this problem.

alex_rose
Level 4
Hi Markus,

Thanks for your input. My method of checking is to see if the incremental backup files have been created but your method is probably quicker. The only problem is that I'm backing up multiple drives on each server and sometimes it will do some drives but not others! Therefore I guess I'll just have to keep checking for the presence or absence of these files.

Another random happening this morning was that the system is warning me that one of the drives was missed (as seen at the bottom of this screenshot, it warns that drive C: was missed) - however if you look at the status icons you'll see that it shows a success for the C: drive and I can confirm that the incremental backup file for the C: drive was in fact created!

I simply can't trust what this program tells me, I can't trust it to do its job reliably and I will be evaluating different vendors products for my other client's system imaging needs. As far as I am concerned this product is not to be trusted for backup.



Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   
Well, I won't be that strict: If it runs fine, it is a good product. But when troubles start, then God help us. :)

An alternative would be to check the BESR Log and parse for the entry that the specific backup job was ok. Btw it use a very similar script too.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

What version/build of BESR are you currently using (check in Help/About)?

Also, are you currently using BESR-MS (Management Solution) to manage the backups of these clients?

alex_rose
Level 4
Hi Chris,

I'm on version 9.0.1.36527 and I'm not using MS. What are the advantages of using BESR-MS?

Had another failure this weekend, one of the servers backed up fine, one didn't and the status page just showed no icon for the job that failed. Neither job managed to do the offsite backup and neither managed to flag this as an error or inform me in any way that offsite had failed.

If there's a reason to run BESR-MS could you let me know, I have a test bed server I could trial it on.

Many thanks,

Alex.

alex_rose
Level 4

Hi Chris,

I'm on version 9.0.1.36527 and I'm not using MS. What are the advantages of using BESR-MS?

Had another failure this weekend, one of the servers backed up fine, one didn't and the status page just showed no icon for the job that failed. Neither job managed to do the offsite backup and neither managed to flag this as an error or inform me in any way that offsite had failed.

If there's a reason to run BESR-MS could you let me know, I have a test bed server I could trial it on.

Many thanks,

Alex.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Alex,

BESR-MS is the management solution which allows you to centrally manage all of your BESR clients. It really depends on the number of BESR clients you have as to whether or not you consider it appropriate. More information here:

http://www.symantec.com/business/products/agents_options.jsp?pcid=pcat_business_cont&pvid=1602_1

alex_rose
Level 4

Hi Chris,

In what way is this different to the BESR console I have installed on DR server? Using that I can centrally manage my BESR clients, I have a feeling I installed the MS once to have a look and didn't see any functionality that wasn't present in the console. If I'm wrong could you let me know what extra functionality it adds?

Also is there a way of forcing offsite copies to start working when I connect a drive? Because the drives are connected to the DR server and the remote agents are viewing them as network shares the remote agents do not detect that they are being connected and hence don't start automatically synchronising the offsite locations - is there a manual way of forcing a synchronisation?

Just so you know only one server decided to do its backup last night. I check during the day, it says it's due to backup during the night, when I come in in the morning one or other of the servers has invariably failed to backup and the status window for that server doesn't even show a failure it simply doesn't show an icon for that date at all. If it was just one of the servers I could bring myself to believe a bad install of the remote agent on that server but as both servers do it at different times I'm lost for ideas.

Are there any logs I can check?

alex_rose
Level 4
Just a little more to add, you can see from the screenshot below that the system knows it missed last nights backup because it's giving me a warning, but you can see that it puts no warning icon in the drive status list for Thursday 12th.

You'll also see that it knows it's due to run a backup at 19:00 tonight. If it does the same thing it's been doing recently it will simply not do the backup tonight but won't bother putting a failure icon for today's date (Friday 13th) in fact it will remove the icon that's currently showing for Friday 13th and show nothing at all for that day.

As far as I can tell the status view is useless because it doesn't reflect reality - there was a backup scheduled, the backup didn't happen, instead of showing this failure in the status it simply changes the display to make it look at if no backup was scheduled - in what way is this useful behaviour for users?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

BESR-MS gives you much more control over your entire BESR estate. One example is that you can create a single backup policy and push this out to all your clients. It also gives you some reporting functionality which can be useful in large environments.

As mentioned previously, it's really designed for large environments so it depends how many BESR clients you are actually managing...

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I agree, clearly there is a problem here which needs looking into further.

A question; what is the cause of the missed backups? Once I know that, I can try and reproduce this here.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Alex,

I just checked and this issue looks as though it is fixed in the next service pack for BESR 2010 which is due for release later this year.

alex_rose
Level 4
If I knew what the cause of the missed backups was I wouldn't be asking for help on this forum :)

The product doesn't seem to have any logs that I can look at to see what might be causing the missed backups, there is no network trouble, the program just seems to decide randomly not to bother doing the backups.

alex_rose
Level 4
So we just keep going with an unreliable backup solution till then?

alex_rose
Level 4
Well a quick update. Tried to uninstall and reinstall the remote agent on the server that was giving me the most problems.

BIG. MISTAKE.

Don't expect BESR to be able to remotely deploy an agent without giving you some sort of E0D3EBC0 error. And when it does give you this error don't expect any help from Symantec.

Search this forum for that error, loads of people experiencing it, no reponse from Symantec.

So I now have a piece of software that cost me £1000 that simply doesn't work.

Seriously people, DO NOT RISK USING BESR. It will make you tear your hair out.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Alex,

It may be possible for us to provide a 'pre-release' fix (aka 'orphan') for this rather than having to wait for SP2. I'm checking on this now and will let you know (I can't make any promises though).

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Alex,

Does this help? http://support.veritas.com/docs/348247

If not, please start a new thread for this separate issue.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Alex,

I've just been told that we can get a pre-release fix for this issue (hopefully sometime next week). You will need to open a case with Tech Support so we can get this to you.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Alex,

We now have a pre-release fix for this issue. You'll need to open a case with Tech Support so that we can get this to you. The permanent fix is in SP2 which is due out around October time.