BE 2012 Fails to duplicate full backup to tape more than once
Created: 18 Jun 2012 | 12 comments
Hi,
I have a Full Backup Job (to Dedup Disk) that runs every Saturday for my file server and being duplicated to tape after the full backup. I have setup a separate Duplicate Backup Job to tape for Monday to Thursday that will duplicate the Most Recent Full Backup. I noticed that the Monday to Thursday tape only duplicates the "System State" from the full backup. Is this by design? Are there any way to achieve this?
Thanks.
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Hello,
Assuming you have two duplication stages (one that runs immediately after the full backup stage, and another that duplicates the most recent full backup) in the same backup job, the duplicate stages should not duplicate just “System State” backups. What are the resources included in the backup job? Would it be possible to attach job logs for the full backup and corresponding duplicate jobs?
Thanks.
Hi Arindam,
I've attached the job logs for the full and duplicate backups for monday and tuesday. I noticed also that the duplicate job on monday duplicates the full backup as it should be. But for the Tuesday to Thursday, it duplicates the System State only. I've attached also a screenshot of hierarchy of the backup job. In the list of stages for the backup job, the stage "Duplicate - Full 2" is what I'm having problems with. I've used the "Most recent full backup" as the source for that duplicate stage.
Thanks Arielc for the logs and the screenshot, I understood the issue you are facing. Will back on this soon after analyzing the issue.
In the meantime if your intension is to duplicate the full (created on Frinday) Monday through Thursday, you can change the source of "Duplicate - Full 2" stage to "Selected backups" and then select “Full”. You can find this setting on the place where you can find "Most recent full backup". Please let me know if this satisfies your requirement.
Thanks.
Hi Arielc,
System state backups are always full (please refer to http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH153996). The “Differential” stage in your backup job is creating “full” system state backup sets. Since “Duplicate –Full 2” is set to source from “Most recent full backup”, it is duplicating system state backups created at 8 PM in the previous day (created by “Differential” stage). Since all the remaining backup sets created in the previous day are differentials, “Duplicate –Full 2” is not duplicating any of them from Tuesday to Thursday.
The method in my previous post will duplicate all the backup sets created on Friday (if that is what you really wanted). Thanks.
Ok. That's why it's just backing up the system state. I'll try what you've suggested above and see if it will duplicate the full backup.
I just noticed that whenever I change any settings on a differencial backup job without changing the selection list, it will always throw a Completed with exceptions backup status when the backup stage is run. Also, it won't allow me to "run now" the backup stage. To solve this, I'll just run the full backup again or just wait for the full backup to run as scheduled. Is this by design?
Anyway, I'll be seeing the results of the change on Tuesday as my Full backup will run on Saturday and the duplicates on Monday and Tuesday.
If you are referring to this message in the job log "The backup options or selections for this job have changed since the last time it ran. You should run the full backup instance of this backup definition as soon as possible to ensure complete protection." then that is expected.
It should not block "run now".
Thanks.
Hi Arindam,
The tuesday schedule for my Duplicate Full 2 should have run this 12:00 PM but it did not. I've changed the source to "Full" last week already. Even if I try to run the duplicate job manually, it doesn't run.
Hi Arindam,
Do you have any more suggestions that I could try?
Is there a way to exclude the system state on differencial backup's so BE won't consider it as the most recent full backup everytime my differencial backup runs?
We are experiencing similar to what arielc documents, but I believe that we have found other questions under investigation and would really benefit from clear documentation on how and what BE 2012 is designed to duplicate:
1) Scenario: a) all b2d's set to duplicate to tape immediately
b) Full Backup - 30gb
c) Incremental Backup 1 5gb (no duplicate because tape drive busy)
d) Incremental Backup 2 300mb (tape drive busy)
e) Duplicate 1 300mb from Full
f) Duplicate 2 300mb from Incremental 1
g) Duplicate 3 300mb from Incremental 2
h) Incremental 3 - fails due to Murphy
i) Duplicate 4 - errors out with 0XE0009444:
Unable to determine ADAMM media identification. Catalog query failed
Final error: 0xe0009444 - The requested source duplicate backup sets catalog record could not be found. Perhaps the media containing the source backup sets was previously deleted.
Only last Incremental is ever marked as having been duplicated to tape.
In order to reset the error, a completely success FULL must be run and immediately duplicated to tape, then the cycle can restart.
Meanwhile all the other Fulls and Incrementals can only be duplicated to tape manually.
Please post where can we get a detailed and correct set of rules on how/what BE 2012 should be doing with duplicates?
Hi David,
Please refer to "About duplicating backed up data" (p. 218) in BE Administrator’s guide.
Regarding your scenario, can you please let me know what was the exact cause of failure of Incr 3? Do all the linked duplicate jobs after duplicate 4 fail with the same error (0xe0009444) until the next full?
Thanks.
Arindam -
Thanks for your interest.
I re-read pp218+ in the Admin Guide with a new outlook and determined that there seems to be no intent in BE 2012 to assure recovery chain continuity with duplicated backups (boo, oops!) - I now understand how tech support would be baffled at my request.
So, to rectify this missing feature, I have created an enhancement idea: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/ideas/be-2012-enhancement-duplicate-recovery-chain-option to address what I believe is missing functionality in the current design of 2012 regarding these duplicate backups.
Regarding my examples, the failure of Incr 3 was intentionally NOT described as (0xe0009444) and was described as 'murphy' because in my world 'stuff' does happen that gets in the way of a proper duplicate operation that has NOTHING to do with any BE errors... That was my intent in this case, to present a real-world scenario that prevented the duplicate from succeeding that was NOT a BE error.
Regarding the linked duplicate jobs all failing with 0xe0009444, yes, they were all failing with that error once one appeared until we broke the cycle by running a new successful FULL, followed immediately by a new DUPLICATE. This actually is a pain at our site because it takes coordination and just the right timing to catch both our B2D AND a tape drive availability to accomplish this process. Fortunately, since clearing out the 25-30 server situations where this was happening, we have NOT had a recurrance.
In previous versions we could edit the selection lists for the duplicates directly and get out of any downward spiral. My enhancement above is also designed to stop this response from happening in the future.
I hope that you and the rest of the Symantec decision-making team see the Customer Value in making duplicates part of the recovery chain retention and fix this situation in an impending update.
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