Backup Exec 22 Compatibility List
Tyrell Baskerville
Most evenings the backup jobs fail with an error of 0xe0008f4 - An unknown error has occurred. If I rerun the job it sometime works. I have always managed to get the job to work but it can take up to about half a dozen tries to get it to work.
I can see that a tape is loaded into the drive but then the job fails. Sometimes it will leave the tape in the drive and sets the drive to prevent removal of the tape from the drive. Once this has happened to all of the drives connected to the filer the only way I have found to unload the tapes from the drives is to reboot the tape library which resets the prevent tape removal flag from the drive so that I can either manually move the tape out using the Remote Management Interface of the tape library or let Backup Exec unload the tape when it tries to load a different one.
Anyone have any suggestions as to why these jobs are failing or some hints on where I can look to investigate the issue, e.g. are there some ndmp logs somewhere on the filer? I am not sure if this is an issue with Backup Exec, ndmp (or something else on the filer) or a problem with the tape library.
The tape library has 4 drives. As each of the NetApp controllers are directly connected to two of the drives each (no SAN switch involved) I have configured the library as two logical libraries so that each controller has access to a robotic path. For the first logical library containing drives 1 and 2 connected to one of the NetApp controllers drive 1 is configured to host the robotic path as a LUN. For the second logical library containing drives 3 and 4 connected to the other NetApp controller drive 4 is configured to host the robotic path as a LUN.
I am running Symantec Backup Exec 2010 R3 and Data ONTAP 8.0.2 7-mode. The NDMP Certification page lists Symantec Backup Exec 2010 R2 but not R3. Also for Symantec Backup Exec 2010 R2 it lists Data ONTAP 8.0 7-mode, for some other products it list 8.0.x 7-mode so it would suggest that 8.0.2 7-mode is not certified.
The Symantec Backup Exec Hardware Compatibility List says that NetApp Data ONTAP 7.0 or newer with NDMP is compatible with Symantec Backup Exec 2010 R2 or newer so this would suggest that by Symantec Backup Exec 2010 R3 with Data ONTAP 8.0.2 7-mode is supported. See =content&id=TECH137050.
My Backup Exec system is running much better now. I deleted all of the tape drives and libraries out of Backup Exec and get it to rediscover them. That has helped. There is a technote about it somewhere
I'm doing overall upgrade planning on our infrastructure and saw SQL Server 2014 SP3 will get out of mainstream support in july 2019 identified which systems still run this version, Backup Exec server being one of them. Even if the extended maintenance support continues, MS will definitely limit their efforts for 2014 in favour of 2016 and newer. Thus I'd like to get all our DB instances upgraded in time - where possible to the same versions on the whole infastructure so that we have to keep an eye on less software version to keep patched and maintained.
The BE 20.3 admin guide mentions SQL Server 2014 Express SP2 as minmum requirement, however I haven't found an indication what newer versions of SQL Server (Express) are supported for the BKUPEXEC instance.
Ideally I'd like to upgrade to SQL Server 2017, then again if Veritas doesn't support new SQL Server for the BKUPEXEC instance it wouldn't be worth the effort. Hence my question about what versions are actually supported by Veritas in this case - and where I can find about.
Refer Backup Exec software compatibility list . Check the backup exec database repository section under Backup Exec Feature specific compatibility. This lists all supported SQL version on which BE can host its database.
Backup Exec 16 Feature Pack 2 provides S3-compatible cloud storage functionality. Customers can use IONOS S3-compatible cloud implementation with Backup Exec. When the configuration process is complete, you can create a storage device within the Backup Exec console that can access mostS3-compatible cloud environments. S3-compatible environments that are not specifically listed in the Backup Exec 16 Hardware Compatibility List are considered AlternativeConfigurations. The Backup Exec 16 Hardware Compatibility List definesAlternative Configurations as:
In the cloud environment, create an account for Backup Exec read/write access. The cloud account credentials, known as the server access key ID and secret access key, must be provided in the Backup Exec console to create the storage device.
The cloud environment must also have buckets configured for Backup Exec use. Buckets represent a logical unit of storage in a cloudenvironment. As a best practice, create specific buckets to useexclusively with Backup Exec. Each Backup Exec cloud storage device mustuse a different bucket. Do not use the same bucket for multiple cloudstorage devices even if these devices are configured on different Backup Execservers.
Bucket names must meet the following requirements:
9. Click OK twice.
10. Select the cloud logon account that you created in step 8, and thenclick Next.
11. Select a bucket from the list of buckets that are associated with theserver name and the logon account details you provided in earlier screens, andthen click Next.
12. Specify how many write operations can run at the same time on this cloudstorage device, and then click Next.
13. This setting determines the number of jobs that can run at the same time onthis device. The suitable value for this setting may vary depending on yourenvironment and the bandwidth to the cloud storage. You may choose the defaultvalue.
14. Review the configuration summary, and then click Finish.Backup Exec creates a cloud storage device. You must restart BackupExec services to bring the new device online.
15. In the window that prompts you to restart the Backup Exec services,click Yes. After services restart, Backup Exec displays the newcloud storage location in the All Storage list. If the S3-compatible cloudenvironment is not displayed in the Backup Exec storage device configurationwizard or console, use BEMCLI to ensure the parameters for the cloud instanceare correct.
Once the S3-compatible cloud storage device is configured in Backup Exec, you can target backup, restore and duplicate jobs to the cloud server. As a best practice, test backup and restore operations should be completed before running regularly scheduled jobs. Backup Exec Data lifecycle management will automatically delete expired sets from the cloud server.
They have reviewed the adamm.log which shows the drives going offline and have suggested I contact HP to check the status of the hardware. I have run the HP Tape Tools and the drives appear to be healthy, although I am occaisionally seeing an LSA_SAS2 Event ID 11 logged on the server - The driver detected a controller error on \Device\RaidPort1.
We are having this same kind of issue with an H222 controller attached to an LTO6 drive in a VMware ESXi 5.5 host (HP custom ISO). The tape drive is externally attached with SAS. The virtual machine has the tape drive added to its configuration (not using DirectPath I/O) and the VM is running Windows Server 2012 R2 and Backup Exec 2014. We have to reboot the host to get the tape drive to come back online.
Regarding the most recent posting, I haven't looked at this in a couple of years but the last time I did we spent a lot of time and were unable to find any reliable way of using tape drives with VMWare. At the time VMWare claimed that tape would work only when connected to specific Adaptec parallel SCSI controllers. I just ran a quick search and the latest document I could find still has that claim:
I once worked with an engineer that ran a lot of testing and was able to get tape drive connected and seeming to work but always ran into random problems with things like losing the tape drive from the guest OS, random I/O errors, etc. SCSI analyzers didn't show any issues with external traffic but somewhere in the system stack things would occasionally not work correctly.
I just pulled the latest copy of the EBSMatrix which shows HP's compatibility ( ) and confirmed that SAS on VMWare is not listed as a supported configuration. The matrix shows direct attached [parallel] SCSI as working but provides a qualifier that HP does not support that configuration. SAS and FC attach are both shown as 'No'.
You can back up your data to virtual tapes, archive the tapes, and manage your virtual tape library (VTL) devices by using Veritas Backup Exec. In this topic, you can find basic documentation needed to perform backup and restore operations using the following versions of Backup Exec:
The procedure for using these versions of Backup Exec with a Tape Gateway is the same. See the Veritas support website for detailed information about how to use Backup Exec, including how to create secure backups with Backup Exec, software and hardware compatibility lists, and administrator guides for Backup Exec.
After you have connected the virtual tape library (VTL) devices to the Windows client, you configure Backup Exec storage to recognize your devices. For information about how to connect VTL devices to the Windows client, see Connecting Your VTL Devices.
Tape Gateway provides 10 tape drives. However, your Backup Exec license agreement might require your backup application to work with fewer than 10 tape drives. In that case, you must deactivate tape drives in the Backup Exec robotic library to leave only the number of tape drives allowed by your license agreement actuvated. For instructions, see Deactivating a Tape Drive in Backup Exec .
Veritas Backup Exec software requires the Tape Gateway medium changer type. If the medium changer type listed under Robotic library is not Tape Gateway, you must change it before you configure storage in the backup application. For information about how to select a different medium changer type, see Selecting a Medium Changer After Gateway Activation.
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