Backup Exec 12d is annoying me now...

#Chri5#

#Chri5#

#Chri5#

Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2003
Posts
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Location
Shropshire
BE x64 12.0 rev 1364 with SP3 installed running on Windows 2003 R2 x64 with SP2.

Hardware is DL380 G5 dual-core with 4GB RAM, Smart Array P400 for the HDs and a dedicated HP U320 HBA for an Ultrium 1 drive.

I've previously been getting 110 to 120GB onto a tape for an overnight backup but now the job is asking for a new tape at 85 to 90GB. I'm heavily filtering the backup set to exclude stuff like MP3s, CD images, some big firmware images (.TAR etc)

Reviewing an aborted job shows:

Code: 
Media operation - overwrite.

Compression Type: Hardware [if available, otherwise software]

Encryption Type: None

Job log shows hardware compression being used against all these targets:

Local server - C: drive - 14GB in 1 hour
Local server - Exchange 1st storage group - 12GB in 1 hour
Local server - Exchange 2nd storage group - 4.5GB in 11 minutes
Local sever - System state - 1.4GB in 9 minutes
Remote server 1 - SQL DBs - 1.8GB in 2 minutes
Remote server 1 - part of C: - 50MB in 24 seconds
Remote server 2 - C: - 5GB in 22 minutes
Remote server 2 - F: - 48GB in 4 hours (though time is probably skewed because it waited for a new tape before finishing this target)

Looking at the media (in BE) used for this job shows:

Data : 79GB
Used capacity : 97.6GB of 97.9GB
Available capacity : 266MB
Total capacity : 97.9GB
Compression ratio : 1:1

BE is using a User-mode driver which device manager reports as being provided by Symantec.

I'm pondering that the driver has been messed with. Any other thoughts? I want the rest of my tape back! :D
 
Sounds like its using the symantec driver, i usually stick with that but I've had a couple of problems in the past so it might be worth using the proper driver for the backup drive, even if its just to test.
 
If using hardware compression you are probably better off using the vendor driver as it'll be, as all vendor specific stuff is, designed to work well with that device. Not just to "work" in any sense of the word with lots of different devices.
It's worth a shot anyway.
 
I've updated the driver to use HP's latest, rebooted and kicked off tonight's job early so I can keep an eye on it.
 
Just a thought, the tapes you are using do support hardware compression don't they?
Stab in the dark. They probably do and if they didn't it'd probably show an error in the log stating they don't. However one should never neglect the obvious.
 
It could be anything pushing it over the edge. We have this with a LTO2 drive, and in the end after days of removing large files from the backup we just gave in and got a LTO3.
 
I posted on the Symantec support forum and one of their engineers posted a link to a support article on tracing the SCSI commands to see if the tape drive is turning on H/W compression.

From what I found, BE was sending the command to turn it on but not getting anything back from the tape drive. The test job I ran for that and that evening's job both failed with tape errors, so I suspect the drive is on it's last legs as I cleaned it on Friday as well.
 
New drive comming from HP under warranty.

Took me a while to persuade the HP tech guy to do it. He wanted me to power down the server and check the SCSI HBA was seated properly - not a popular outage when it's the Exchange server.
 
One replacement tape drive later... 108GB on a single tape and a working backup.

Once you can convinence the HP droid to send you the parts, it's super quick service.
 
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