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A Moment Of Praise


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So, I usually ask about problems or rant on about crashes and backup failures, but it's time for a change. I recently migrated from an old P4 based server to a DL120 with plenty of RAM and CPU grunt. I installed the very latest build of RS Multi Server and put in my license codes for the value add-on pack I bought.

 

I'm running the OS/Application and catlog files off an SSD disk, which is soooo much faster. Hopefully I don't hit any reliability problems...

 

The experience thus far has been a breath of fresh air. I can now repair catalog files (!) which used to always fail, requiring a full rebuild which took hours, if not days at times. Nothing has failed or crashed, although I still get those odd 'pauses' where the application seems to freeze, but then comes back to life after a minute or so.

 

I've had a few servers failing to backup with 'backup client reserved' issues, but hopefully that'll iron itself out (it's probably due to there being two RS servers running at the same time - see below!)

 

So Roxio/Dantz, whoever - I see progress, thank you!

 

The only small snag, which was (duh!) user error was to leave the old physical RS server running and just shutdown the RS Server application. This was fine during testing, but when the first script kicked off the 'auto launcher' fired up the old version and I started getting catalog sync errors from the new server. All has been fine after stopping the auto-launcher service and repairing (yes, repairing) the catalogs files.

 

I know this is tempting fate...

 

Richard

Edited by Richy_Boy
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I know I spoke too soon. Our large Disaster Recovery Backup Set is no longer wanting to groom! I'm in the process of splitting it into two smaller Backup Sets, but it used to work flawlessly under my earlier build of 7.7 on a less powerful server.

 

Odd.

 

I'm also seeing a lot of 'destiniation does not exist' errors where for some reason this server can't find the backup set (which is on a remote NAS storage unit). I have changed the HOSTNAME to the IP in the settings to circumvent a potential DNS problem - hopefully that'll fix it.

 

Things are running so much faster on an SSD disk, especially catalog builds/grooming processes.

 

Rich

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OK, so it crashed during a huge snapshot transfer when trying to sort out the Disaster Recovery backup set grooming problem - this is going from bad to worse. Maybe this is the Retrospect of old and the hardware it was sitting on was making it feel a bit more snappy?

 

Rich

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Ouch! I feel your pain. We used to do disk backup, too. Only tape for now. It is slow, but no grooming worries any more.

 

For W2k8 servers' disaster recovery I have Windows backups, too, in addition to Retrospect backups. In case someone is interested, this is how I do it: all our W2k8 servers, physical and virtual, do Windows backup (disk image) of their system drives to a share daily (less than 30 GB for server) and this location is backed up to tape daily with Retrospect. Two tape sets are in use for this, and they are recycled often. Now I always have the previous day's system for every server on disk and some more on tape. Disk and tape cost is minimal. I did this because I did not trust Retrospect to be able to restore W2k8 AD, since it was not officially supported a while back.

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Ok, the moment of praise is slowly slipping away - sorry Roxio.

 

Since upgrading to the latest RS Multi Server build I keep getting 'can't access network volume' when backing up some servers or (even more annoyingly) when grooming large backup sets.

 

+ Executing Grooming at 11/07/2011 09:47 (Execution unit 1)

Grooming Backup Set DisasterRecovery...

Groomed 30.3 GB from Backup Set DisasterRecovery.

Grooming Backup Set DisasterRecovery failed, error -1116 ( can't access network volume)

You must recreate the Backup Set's Catalog File.

See the Retrospect User's Guide or online help for details on recreating Catalog Files.

11/07/2011 10:44:07: Execution incomplete

Duration: 00:55:49 (00:03:09 idle/loading/preparing)

 

 

This is odd and will be a pain to diagnose as I have migrated both RS build and physical server at the same time, although the network and backup NAS destination haven't changed. I've removed hostnames and replaced with static IPs and it's still throwing this error.

 

I'd expect this error on laptops when users get fed up with RS Client thrashing the disk to death during a scan, but not with servers that are backing up overnight. Ugh..

 

I should point out I didn't get ANY of these errors under the old build/physical server. I'll take a look at Ethernet drivers next, although I'm on the latest HP supported versions as it is.

 

Has anyone else seen this?

 

Rich

Edited by Richy_Boy
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