Veritas Backup Exec

[Student^2]

Actually, yes it could. Tape drives are not very sturdy on the whole. I've set up some that were bad off the skid. And the one that died here? 5 months old

[Marmie]

Just wanted to let everyone know, I ran the update and have had 2 successful backups - no problems running. So.... I guess we'll wait and see if the update fixed the problem or if I will have other issues. Hopefully not!
Thanks again for all you advice and input. I appreciate the help.

[Marmie]

After I had the 2 successful backups - one manual and one scheduled....I've had 2 days of pain again.... I always have to reboot in order to clear the aborted job because the thing doesn't run. This morning after another unsuccessful backup, I rebooted and set up a new manual backup, and it ran. Now, what the heck is going on? I am really confused and frustrated by the whole thing. Some I have talked to say not to use the Veritas...they've had trouble too. Any ideas??? Thanks!

[EricTheRed]

Veritas Backup Exec=the hell that is my job...

If you're on BE version 8, check the website for the latest update to 8.5 build 3572. It's a massive download but clears up a lot of problems, especially on Win2k. It sounds like the problem you're having is the "media fix" problem that we encounter here all the time. Also, continue after the software install into the driver install. Always use BE drivers for tape drives, ESPECIALLY on Win2k. BE will NOT function correctly with M$ certified drivers.
The new DDS4 drives are flaky at best. They won't ever work quite right no matter what you do, unless you want to use DD3 tapes. Also, brand new DDS4 tapes leave a lot of gunk on the drive heads when they are brand new. While you're breaking these tapes in, you have to clean the drive a LOT. On a 5 day rotation it takes a couple of months to get your tapes broken in well...
Also if you've done all of the above and tapes are still giving you fits, we've found that you can use BE to run a quick erase on the tapes and they'll work the next time you use them. No guarantees on the time after...

[BreakWindows]

This is probably the dumbest solution you'll read, but l think its time to de-evolve. l've been using BE 7.3 for a few months now, delivering a solid asskicking to this puppy on a daily basis, and have yet to crash the thing or even get a major flaw. Maybe they've gotten lazy in recent versions? lt just seems odd that so many people are getting migraines from this software, when on a single NT machine that runs more services than it was ever meant to, l have no trouble at all...l mean, l'm good, but l'm not that damn good

[EricTheRed]

I agree 7.3 > 8.x except I have some users that get really weird things. They don't hurt anything, but it makes my users jittery. For instance, scheduled jobs will just disappear. They run ok, but the job isn't visible unless you reboot the server. Performance-wise though, I have fewer problems with 7.x. Then again, how many companies has this software been through? Seagate used to own it, someone else had it before that... How many times has this program been rehacked?

[Student^2]

Well, as a company we have 5 backup servers - all running Veritas 7.3. It is pretty stable on the whole and we are not planning on upgrading anytime soon. Usually, we just have 1 or 2 drives die a year.

[Oberon42]

I know I can't help with your problem but scince we seem to have an abundance of BE knowledge here I would like to ask a question
about it. I am currently loading 7.5 on a novell server (netware 3.12) I am trying to get the tape drive to run on a win95 cleint
but no luck. BE tells me that the tape drive needs to be in the server it's self. I don't have an issue with that on the whole BUT How the heck do you load the scsi card and tape drive in the server ? or is there a way to get the server to push the data out onto the network to get it to back up on the win95 client?

[MacGyver]

I backed up a Novell 3.12 server for well over a year using a tape drive mounted in my workstation. And tape drive software from Seagate (which is now called Veritas Backup Exec, BTW!)

I simply backed up all the files on the server by selecting the mapped drives I wanted to backup. I think what you need is a straight backup program that runs on your workstation, rather than a server based software. This will let you backup the files you want. However, you will not have disaster recovery available, you will have to reinstall Netware and then login, then restore the files off tape.

If the backup software is running on the server, the tape drive MUST be installed on the server. Are you having trouble installing the SCSI tape drive in the server?

[Oberon42]

you could say that
I have NO idea how to load
the scsi drivers or the tape drivers
and the client really doesn't want
the tape in the server due to it's age
but My boss says that our supplier told him
that this is the software they needed. and that it would work from the client but I
spoke to thier tech poeple and they said
no way

[Marmie]

Hey EricTheRed,
Thanks for the input...I have already downloaded the 3572 build. I have deleted the scheduled job and now yesterday and today ran a manual backup. It has worked, but certainly I should be able to set this thing up to run from a schedule, shouldn't I? I will try cleaning the tape drive and let's see what happens.
Thanks for the help.

[EricTheRed]

Backup Exec is indeed server-based only software. Having sold and supported both server and workstation based backups, I'm going to say that server-based is far superior.
For Novell, you don't need tape drivers, but you do need SCSI drivers. You'd be better off going to a forum with Novell or SCSI info to find out from somebody who knows exactly how to load these. Basically though, you get your driver onto the DOS portion of your Novell drive, and in the AUTOEXEC you load it. We use Adaptec controllers, and we have a line like this: LOAD AHA1540 PORT=330 INT=B DMA=5. That loads up the SCSI driver. Once you get that running, you simply load BE and it will detect the drive and use it.
Make sure that you go into the SCSI card's BIOS and turn its max sync transfer rate as low as it will go, or you'll have all sorts of problems.

[EricTheRed]

Marmie -- Yes, you should have no problems running it from a schedule. You'll really just have to try it and see what happens.

[Marmie]

Once again this program is giving me major grey hair!!!! I have been able to run a manual backup for a whole 5 days, without incident. Now this morning, I set it up, and it stopped saying it was 'overwriting media'. I was on the phone to the tech support for an hour, and he told me to disable the services and reboot (which I have to do at lunch). Now, I am sooooooooo frustrated, if I have the services disabled how the heck can I even open the program? He had me do some things while we were on the phone (we went very quickly) and now I can't even open the program.... I'm really upset. Does anyone know what I can do? I will call them back, but I'd like some feedback if anyone has had experience with this.
Thanks.

[Sunshine]

The 35/70 our company uses wouldn't do backups reliably either, doing it manually or scheduled. Turns out the motor in the drive was defective. We had the drive replaced and haven't had a problem since. You may want to have a Compaq Authorized service depot check it out for you. If the drive is out of warranty, it'll assume the remainging warranty of the Compaq Server it's installed on (straight from Compaq's mouth).