I'm responsible for a relatively small network - 25 PCs and one file/email server. The server is an HP2000 with a 36GB RAID array that needs to be backed up daily. We have been using an internal HP SureStore DAT24 tape drive with Veritas Backup Exec. Lately, the drive has become less and less reliable. I am religious about cleaning the drive every few backups, but I am continually getting Failed Backups and the only error messages have said that the drive needs cleaning (usually though, there is no error message - just a Failure notice). I'm about ready to throw in the towel on this tape drive and try something else - unless anyone out there has any advice on how I can get this POS to work.

I'm toying with the idea of installing a USB 2.0 card in the server and purchasing three external USB 2.0 Hard Drives for backups - one offsite at all times, and the other two rotated in and out of the firesafe. Anyone have any experiences - positive or negative - to report that have to do with doing backups to an external HDD? Or does anyone have a better suggestion?

With Only 36Gig of drive/raid in the server
I'd go with the removable drive of some type.

Using a usb drive ?

What O/S are using on the server

It is a scsi raid correct ?
Does your system support Hot swap ?





How warm /hot is the tape drive getting ?
That may be the cause of the errors

Do you rotate your backup tapes if so could they possibly be whats dirty, we had similar problem and found filure was due to a particular tape as opposed to the drive, if so could always try new tapes.

What method do yuo use we do a Diff on a Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur and a Full on a Fri. There are 4 Fulls for each server (rotaing so we have upto 4 weeks of backup)

I like the backup tapes as you can easily restore a users single document.

We've just been forced to move from Veritas to ASO (still soak testing it).

:)

Have you ever thought of something like server magic.

:)

"religious about cleaning the drive every few backups"
Sounds like drive damage to me........

Something elso must be going on......

In any case, a new tape, and trying a few "test backup" routines would seem in order. (you did already)

Or -- create new BK jobs that do the same work on some other software.

Not enough info, this does not compute......

Originally posted by Rick
With Only 36Gig of drive/raid in the server
I'd go with the removable drive of some type.

Using a usb drive ?

What O/S are using on the server

It is a scsi raid correct ?
Does your system support Hot swap ?





How warm /hot is the tape drive getting ?
That may be the cause of the errors

I'll try to answer all of the questions that you and the others have asked.

Server OS is MS Windows 2000 Small Business Server.

Standard RAID 5 with "Virtual sizing enabled" is the current RAID configuration. The drives are "hot-swap".

The server currently does not have any USB functionality. I'm thinking of either installing a USB 2.0 card or running the backups remotely to my workstation - which has USB 2.0 already installed.

According to the most recent logs, the temperature never exceeds 35 degrees centigrade.

The backup scheme that I inherited (which admittedly isn't the best) is a ten-tape rotation that recycles every two weeks. Full backups every day. That means that there are no weekly or monthly archives to fall back on. If the tape drive was functional, I'd buy all new tapes and switch to a grandfather-father-son routine. but I haven't been able to get a successful backup in more than two weeks now (:eek:).

I considered the fact that the tapes themselves may be dirty.So I purchased two new tapes. After following HP's recommendation of doing five complete tape cleaning cycles, I inserted a fresh tape and did a small test backup, which was successful. Then I attempted to run a full backup - which takes two tapes. That backup failed. There was no explanation for the Failure.

Server Magic? Isn't that only for NetWare? We have PowerQuest's Volume Manager, but of course that doesn't include a backup manager.



Some additional information for all - I inherited this system. I did not select the equipment. There was no IS person before me, and I have very incomplete information about how the system was originally designed and tested. For the most part it has been stable - except for the tape drive. I am a one-man IS/IT department. Since backups can only be run at night, I am never here to monitor them. Since full backups take two tapes, I start the backup after everyone leaves, and get here early the next morning to switch the tapes.

I don’t know that using a USB HDD to backup would be cost effective
even if you used a 120 gig drive after a full Grandfather and a father, then son backup you would almost full
requiring a second and or even 3rd drive
Depending on the data file sizes

You already have hotswap ,, How about adding and backing up to another hotswap drive or drives ?

The reason I asked about the temps in the case.
If the tapes are getting to warm they may stretch .
Also the time between tape swaps may be one of the causes for the failure ..
Timing out maybe ?

I’m still using an 8 gig tape even here at home on the work station
Die Hard tape fans die hard :)
What about installing a larger tape drive "Dat" maybe ?
Full backup on one tape no swapping

Thanks for your reply Rick. I see that you're in Milwaukee. I was born and raised in Milwaukee. I appreciate your comments.

I believe that you may be correct regarding the timeout on the tape swaps, but that doesn't explain why it was working for a few months and then stopped working. I hate the fact that I can't do a full backup on a single tape. I looked into the cost of buying a 40 gig tape drive and it was about $650 plus tax for an HP 20/40 drive. Even if I buy three 120GB USB 2.0 external drives I'm looking at $600 plus tax. Plus I have the added flexibility of using the drives for other periodic systems maintenance on the 25 workstations I have to maintain. So cost effectiveness actually seems to favor the hard drive solution.

But I'm wondering more about the issue of recovery from a catastrophic system failure of the server. With the Tape Drive, I have the option of "one button recovery" (which isn't really as easy as HP makes it sound by the way). I'm just trying to decide - if I have to invest in a new backup solution - which solution is the most beneficial and provides the most flexibility?

The problem with installing new drives on the SCSI RAID is that all four of our current drives are 9.1GB drives. If I understand this correctly, any new drives that I add must be the same size as the existing drives. Since there is only space for two more drives that means that I can only add 18GB. Not enough space for a backup. If someone can tell me that I am absolutely wrong about this please do! Of course, adding a couple big SCSI drives would allow me to do full backups locally, but it really doesn't provide the security of a backup that is removable from the server (i.e. - to a firesafe or an offsite location). So I don't think it provides the best measure of safety.

The server does have an IDE controller, but it is limited to only controlling the CDROM - It will not work with IDE Hard Disks according to the HP documentation. My original thought was to add an IDE Removable Drive Rack and swap out 40GB HDDs - but that doesn't appear to be an option. I guess I could install another IDE controller card, but I've heard of compatability issues with IDE controller cards and SCSI - particularly SCSI that is built on to the mobo. That might also be an issue with the USB card, which is why I'm considering doing the backups remotely at my workstation.

I'm curious too about the comments made by skhips and no-mbr that indicate the software could be an issue. skhips - why did you move away from Veritas? And wouldn't a hard drive backup also provide me with the ability to restore a single file?

Just a note of experience. Husband's work puter using an HP tape drive for backup..think software called Colorado backup, or something with Colorado in the name. He's been having trouble with the complete backup going onto just a single tape in the past few months (would take several tries)..and last weekend when he wanted to do a full backup because he intended to wipe the hard drive and start over...the tape drive failed completely. "Mechanical failure" message. Fortunately, we have an external HP tape drive that we could use, but we're checking into other methods of backup also. The HP tape drive in that work puter that just failed is only a little over a year old...just old enough, no doubt, to be out of warranty.

Do you have the option to enable compression in your back up program, this may allow you fit all you're data onto one tape.

Does the system fail during the first or second tape?

We had a new system and the designers chose the new backup software, just the one they happen to use.

What about.

1. Manually kicking off the backup job and seeing if it still fails.
2. Creating a new backup job as already suggested by someone else.
3. If these fail try a manual complete backup not a scheduled job.
4. If you have it installed you could try Win NT backup to see if they will work and prove your backup tape is ok.

:)

skhips-

I have tried both software and hardware compression, independently and together, and still am unable to fit the backup on a single tape. The 24GB rating of the tape assumes maximum compression, and the tapes really only hold 12GB without compression. The compression ratio varies greatly depending on the file type, and some files just don't compress at all. The first two "Backup sets" are the Exchange Mailboxes and the MS Information Store, which total roughly 13.2GB, and the first tape fills up midway through the third Backup Set which is the C:Drive (a logical drive that totals roughly 3GB. So basically, even with compression the first tape is only holding about 15GB.

The most recent failed backup was manually started. If you read the Job Log from Veritas, everything appears to be normal - including all the Consistency Checks, right up until the very last line: "Job Completion Status: Failed". Very frustrating.

I will take your advice and recreate the Backup Job. I just noticed something in the Job Log that might be indicative of an incorrect setting.

What version of exchange are you using.

We have limited the size of our users inboxs to 10240 KB and set it so they can't send email if it is over it (we could set them not to be able to recieve but we could then be responsible for them not recieving an important email on time)

This greatly reduced the data size on the server and may be useful if not already been used.

:)

If I only had such control...

I've got a couple users with over a gig of stuff in their mailbox. Most people have been pretty good at keeping their mailboxes clean. But most of the sales people refuse to ever delete anything because they want a trail for their contract negotiations. And they won't move the emails to their local hard drives because those aren't backed up on a regular basis. I've tried to convince them that they should print anything important enough to keep and place it in the contract file, but...

Anyway, I did discover a setting that might be the cause of the failures. Someone had selected the Open Files Option, which attempts to backup any open files by opening them in a locked state. The Help file says that even if the rest of the backup is successful, the backup will be labeled as Failed if Veritas is unable to open any of the open files. So I've unchecked the Open Files Option, and I'll try another backup tonight.

Our users archive mail they wish to keep to the fike server (home drive)
which is on the file server and backed up, because of this process they opt for a delete most the time and only arhice whats really really needed, from the file server archive folder they have a shortcut in outlook so they can even read the email archived on the filestore via outlook.

Tell your users the backup is failing due to their poor housekeeping and if you do not place restrictions the system will fail !!

:P)

Just wanted to follow-up on this item. After running HP TapeTools analysis I discovered that the Tape Drive needed calibration - or so it said. After running the calibration script, the drive became totally unusable. To the credit of HP, they sent somebody out the very next day and swapped out the tape drive for free. I wasn't really impressed with the guy they sent though. He didn't want to stick around long enough to make sure the drive actually worked. And I had my doubts since the initial read/write test failed. I used a brand new HP tape and it reported that the tape was bad. However, after rebooting the system again, everything seemed to work okay. According to the technician, these DAT24i drives tend to cr@p out every two or three years. Good thing mine took a dive while it was still under warranty.

Meanwhile, I've had to resign myself to the fact that tape drives are a necessary evil. I am able to do backups to a remote external hard drive, but they're the single file type, and obviously there's no way to do a quick restore since the drive is not directly connected to the server. According to the information I've been able to get, there's no way to boot our server from a USB drive even if it was directly connected to the server. Oh well.

Thanks to everyone who provided input.