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SSR 2013 On-Site / Off-Site different file sizes

renegade34g
Level 4

I have a continuing problem with my on-site and off-site external drives where the two seperate drives might have different file sizes for the same backup set. One example is Our main file server backup for on-site might be 200GB and on the Off-site, it could be 400GB. I have the option checked so SSR managed the recovery points. I have formatted on-site and off-site drives and reinstalled SSR thinking it will fix the problem. However, last week it seems SSR is not clearing the off-site drives. Our on-site drive is sitting at 800GB and a couple days ago I got a warning that a backup couldnt go to off-site because it was out of space. The drive is a 2TB drive. Somehow the off-site drive managed to fill up while the on-site is pretty much staying a constant size.  Also I noticed on some of the different backup sets for the various servers is a folder called "File Backup Data". Sometimes the server folder on the on-site will have this in it while the off-site does not and vice versus.

 

So my question is, how do I keep SSR from over taking my off-site drive and what is this "File Backup Data" folder and why isn't this folder on both on-site and off-site drives?

15 REPLIES 15

lmosla
Level 6

check this technote and see if is relevant to your issue  http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH158668

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

'File Backup Data' is a file-based backups (not a volume-level backup). This type of backup does not provide the ability to do an offsite copy.

Are you running SP2 for SSR 2013? Check in Help/About to confirm the version details.

I think we'd need to see a directory listing from both the primary backup destination and the offsite destination to see what is going on here.

And are you doing any drive rotation here?

renegade34g
Level 4

After further looking into the files, they are different. I guess I was looking at the drives to fast and didn't realize which drive I was looking at. My fault, sorry.

 

Yes, I was instructed by our distrbuter that suggested SSR to have one drive be the main, and three off-site drives. So the way it's setup now, every week a new off-site drive is plugged in. Drive B week 1, Drive C week 2 and Drive D week 3. 

 

After reading the tech document I will change it into 2x2 setup as suggested. 1 main and 1 off-site doing a rotation every week.  Unless there is a better suggestion. 

 

SSR 2013 version 11.0.2.49853

renegade34g
Level 4

After reading further into the manual on how to setup a 2X2 rotation, how is this going to be setup? One drive set is going to get the "Recovery Point Set", let's call it " SET A". The other drive set is going to get the "Independent Recovery Point", SET B. Is there an auto-delete for the independent sets? 

Also, if we do a drive rotation once a week. are we going to have to look on two drive sets for files? I'm assuming so, but want to clarify because I'm sure I will be drilled with questions later.  Is there a suggested setup procedure when doing a dual Onsite/Offsite drive rotation?

 

One more thing, for the Independent backup for SET B. Is that taking any incremental changes, or is it a full backup everyday if we schedule it to be?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

An independent backup only does full backups, not incrementals.

You can only define 2 offsite locations per backup job. You setup a single job and specify the 2 offsite locations (i.e. 2 x USB drives).

The idea is that each location (primary location and both offsite locations) will contain the same set of recovery point files.

I am not sure what you mean by a 2x2 rotation. Can you explain in more detail about exactly what you are trying to achieve?

renegade34g
Level 4

What I mean by 2x2 is what is in the tech doc. For each server backup you have 1 on-site and 1 off-site and rotate it with another set. At least that's what I got out of the document. http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH158668

 

I just want to backup 5 servers to an on-site and an off-site drive with a weekly rotation to keep an off-site drive, off-site for a week. The off-site drive is kept on-site for a week getitng a week's worth of backups. So we would like to have another off-site drive be physically off-site for that same week the other off-site drive  is on-site getting the backups for that week. So if that building burns down, we would only lose a weeks worth. They wanted a week because there were problems doing it every day and every other day. 

renegade34g
Level 4

Can you rotate out the off-site drives, just not the on-site drives? My main problem was the off-site storage drives were filling up, just not the on-site drive. 

 

At the top of this doc that was linked to me in the beginning of this post: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH158668

 

It says

"Symantec currently supports one backup device\destination per backup job. Swapping or rotating storage devices (such as USB drives) in a Backup Exec System Recovery (BESR) or Symantec System Recovery (SSR) job is not currently supported.

(This does not apply to offsite storage or RDX/RD1000 removable media.) 

This document identifies suggested methods in using a removable storage devices."

My question is based on the bolded statement. Can someone confirm that rotating off-site drives are allowed or not?

lmosla
Level 6

Yes, you can rotate offsite drives as described here:  http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO83564  

Hope this helps

renegade34g
Level 4

Ok now I'm back to square one. I said the off-site was not syncing with the on-site in terms of size. 

 

"One example is Our main file server backup for on-site might be 200GB and on the Off-site, it could be 400GB"

 

So why is my off-site drive not staying the same size as my on-site drive? If it helps, we swap out 3 off-site drives.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

It really depends on what you mean by rotation for your offsite drives.

As this doc states (http://www.symantec.com/docs/HOWTO83564), you can have 2 drives acting as offsite #1 and offsite #2. This is supported and should work.

However, if you have 2 drives and have only specified 1 offsite location (and you are rotating these drives that act as 1 offsite). This type of setup is not supported and you will run into problems - this might explain what you are seeing.

Can you let us know which one of the above you are using?

"One example is Our main file server backup for on-site might be 200GB and on the Off-site, it could be 400GB"

--> It would help if you provided us with directory listings (or screenshots) so we can see exactly what files are listed on both primary and offsite locations.

renegade34g
Level 4

Thanks Chris, I understand now.

How we currently do it is we have one on-site drive (Drive A) ip address X.X.X.40  Then we have three off-site drives that rotate as one, ip address X.X.X.41. So all three off-site drives share the same IP address. Once a week we swap out off-site drive for another one.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

OK, so this explains the problems you are seeing then.

What you need to do is define 2 offsite locations (sorry, 2 is the maximum you can have) and then rotate them as needed. Basically, the 2 offsite drives should contain the same data that is on the primary backup destination.Each time you connect an offsite drive, it should 'sync' itself and copy and missing data from the primary destination.

Hope this helps.

renegade34g
Level 4

I just want to make sure I'm going to do this right then.

 

I will have one backup job per server with three drives each.

On-site X.X.X.40

Off-Site A X.X.X.41

Off-Site B X.X.X.42

I will delete the backup files on the two off-sites and start fresh. Then start the backup job to all three drives on all the servers. Once the backups are all done. I can remove drive A and take off-site while drive B will still get the updates. Over the course of one week, drive B will get all the updates. When Monday morning comes I can then swap drive B and A. 

 

Once drive A is plugged in, will it sync up for a week's worth of updates after being offline for a week?

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

Yes, that's correct. Drive A should 'catch-up' and sync all the missing recovery point files once it has been attached.

renegade34g
Level 4

Awesome, thanks for the help. If I run into any problems this week, I will just respond to this post.