Backup Exec 12d is annoying me now...

#Chri5#

#Chri5#

#Chri5#

Soldato
Joined
27 Feb 2003
Posts
7,274
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
 
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.
 
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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