Backup & Recovery Community Blog

 

The Backup and Recovery Community Blog is the perfect place to share short, timely insights including product tips, news and other information relevant to the Backup and Recovery community. Any authenticated Connect member can contribute to this blog.

• 0

  Created: PackMatt73 16 May 2013

  Backup Exec 3600 Appliance: Information Protection You Can Bank On

    A bank without money is not going to attract any customers. And while it’s unlikely that a sinkhole will suddenly appear and swallow up a vault, there is an important resource in business today that is all too vulnerable: information. According to the latest State of Information Survey from Symantec, roughly half of an organization’s value can be attributed to the information it is generating and storing. And like the bank that needs to be able to loan out its funds to generate revenue through earning interest, information does companies no good if employees and customers can’t gain access to what they need. There are a variety of factors that can put business information at risk today. Natural disasters, accidental deletions and malicious outsiders can all be as damaging to the average business as a robbery to a bank. In case disaster does strike, organizations need to know they have a solution that...
• 1

  Created: PackMatt73 10 May 2013

  We've got 2 MS MVPs & a vmware vExpert on a G+ Hangout today talking virtualized backups

    Location:   Google+ Hangout (link below) Time:   Fri, 10 May, 2013 - 13:00 - 14:00 EDT   Greetings Fans of Virtualization! I have rounded up 2 Microsoft MVPs & a vmware vExpert for a G+ Hangout today at 1.00 EDT to discuss a White Paper they co-authored: Virtual Machine Backup & Recovery: Five Critical Decisions...
• 0

  Updated: @BackupMikko 08 May 2013

  Five Critical Decisions for Virtual Machine Backup and Recovery

  How far along are you on your virtualization journey? Most organizations already have more than half of their systems virtualized and are currently virtualizing their most business critical applications. Now you are facing the challenge of keeping your ever-expanding virtual environment protected while providing the required service level for the business critical physical systems. Managing two separate isolated environments increases complexity and introduces potential for gaps in the data protection strategy if not carefully planned and implemented. A poorly planned data protection strategy will not only increase risk to the data but will also consume more storage, restrict your recovery options and increase the time spent managing the environment. This is why it is important to understand the options and pitfalls when building a data protection strategy for virtual and mixed environments. Host-level Integration and Virtual Machine optimized...
• 0

  Created: AshutoshTamhankar 23 Apr 2013

  Removing VMWare snapshots left behind by Backup Exec

    Snapshots created for a virtual machine on an ESX host, may not be deleted after a backup if the remote agent crashes abnormally during the backup operation. So that such orphaned backup exec snapshots can be deleted automatically, following registry key could be set:   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Backup Exec For Windows\Backup Exec\Engine\VMware Agent   Key name Value Data type AutoOrphanSnapshotRemoval 1 = Orphaned snapshots created by Backup Exec are deleted at the beginning of the backup. REG_DWORD   More information here: http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH200709
• 2

  Created: AshutoshTamhankar 23 Apr 2013

  Disabling security (TLS/SSL) between Backup Exec Server and Remote Server communication for test purposes?

    Backup Exec issues a security certificate for both the Backup Exec server and the remote computer. The security certificate is valid for approximately one year and is automatically renewed during normal operations. However, if the certificate expires you must re-establish the trust. The certificate (*.CRT) and private key (*.key) is stored on the backup server and the remote server in the data folder ( %programfiles%\Symantec\Backup Exec\Data or %programfiles%\Symantec\RAWS\Data).    The trust between the remote computer and the Backup Exec server is automatically established during installation: 1) push-installing the Agent for Windows to remote computers. 2) add the remote computer to the list of servers on the Backup and Restore tab.     For reasons requiring this mechanism to be disabled, use the following registry key on the backup server and the remote server. This is...
• 0

  Updated: AshutoshTamhankar 24 Apr 2013

  Exclude files from a Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR) backup in Backup Exec 2012

    Simplified Disaster Recovery (SDR) works with Backup Exec when you run backup jobs that include all critical system component selections. For each computer that you protect with this type of backup job, Backup Exec creates a disaster recovery information file for that computer. A disaster recovery information file contains computer-specific information for the computer being backed up. Computer-specific information includes details such as hard disk layout, storage drivers, network drivers, and system version details. It also includes Backup Exec catalog details such as backup set information and recovery point details. Each disaster information recovery file uses the file name <computer_name>.DR.   If you uncheck files/folders from a critical resource, the green light for SDR goes off and no .DR file is create for the backup. Sometimes you might want to exclude files/folders which are temporary for example. Following registry change...
• 0

  Created: AshutoshTamhankar 17 Apr 2013

  Performance tuning keys for VMware backups and restores

  The size of the read and write buffers used for the VWware API (VDDK) by Backup Exec can be tuned using the following registry keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec\Backup Exec For Windows\Backup Exec\Engine\VMware Agent   "Enable Buffered Reads"=dword:00000001 "Number of Read Buffers"=dword:00000004 "Size of Read Buffers"=dword:00000400 "Enable Buffered Writes"=dword:00000001 "Number of Write Buffers"=dword:00000004 "Size of Write Buffers"=dword:00000400 More info.  If you are looking at tuning performance of your backups generally, recommend you to go through the Backup Exec 2012 performance tuning guide: The...
• 0

  Updated: lmosla 12 Apr 2013

  Keeping Backup Exec 2012 Up To Date with LiveUpdate

  LiveUpdate's task is to keep Backup Exec fit, healthy, and up to date. Times to run LiveUpdate: For new installations: When having issues with Backup Exec Periodically during scheduled times When upgrading Backup Exec: Run LiveUpdate following a new installation. Note: Keep checking for LiveUpdates until LiveUpdate is completely up to date and there isn’t any updates left to install (Reboot as necessary). Run LiveUpdate before and after a Backup Exec upgrade. Schedule LiveUpdate at convenient times when there aren’t any jobs scheduled.  The Backup Exec services are restarted during updates. Note:  Avoiding SQL Conflicts: When Backup Exec is installed use Backup Exec own inbuilt SQL instance (SQL Express) to host the Backup Exec database.  Do not use a SQL instance that is used in production. When updates are ran...
• 6

  Created: Mike55 27 Mar 2013

  BackupExec 2012 Hotfix 201596 update warning - loss of storage

  Backup Exec 2012 v14.0 Rev 1798 (64Bit) Problem:  I used live update to install the 201596 hotfix on my CAS last week.  The update showed successful, but after the reboot there were problems.  The following three services were set to disabled after the reboot, Backup Exec Deduplication Engine, Backup Exec Deduplication Manager and PostgreSQL Server 8.3.  Also, all disk storage was missing (Local Backup to Disk Storage, Local Deduplication Storage and Network Disk Storage).  Only tape storage remained.   Troubleshooting: I tried to add a disk storage location back and re-catalog the sets, but that operation failed with a duplicate key error.  I deleted that disk storage and then was unable to see it as a storage location choice to add again. I uninstalled the hotfix through the windows 2008 R2 uninstall utility.  The storage was still gone.  I reapplied and the hotfix with no change.  Those three services...
• 2

  Updated: Alex Sakaguchi 22 Feb 2013

  Global Deduplication Myths

  Don’t customers hate being misled? I know I do.  Sometimes it can be innocent…you know, like maybe the sales person wasn’t as knowledgeable as he/she could’ve been.  Or perhaps they were new.  In any case, it behooves the customer to do some homework to make sure that they are not being misled, innocently or otherwise.   Your homework is done. I came across a situation recently where a customer said that a vendor told them their solution could do global deduplication the same as Symantec, but cheaper.  My first thought was wow that’s a big deal.  As you may know, Symantec deduplication capabilities built into NetBackup and Backup Exec offer customers the flexibility of leveraging dedupe at the client, server, or target, and can...