Veritas Backup Exec Upgrade

[Marietta Bleasdale]

Howold are your tapes? There is a well known fact that tapes have failed due to age and wear.

You may also have a dirty R/W head on the loader itself.

Clean the tape drive head with new cleaning tape 5-6 times to make sure there is no tape residue buildup.

Dropouts abound on new tape much less old tape. Be sure and check the heads on the tape unit as well. Back to basics. Create a file, back it up to tape, delete it from your computer and restore it from tape.

Another spanner in the works is that I performed exactly the same process at a different location (same server upgrade, same HBA card and same autoloader) and had no issues whatsoever in that all tapes were recognised from the offset.

You may try to copy your physical tapes to virtual ones and see if that resolves the problem and lets you restore the data. If that works, you may use that approach as a temporary workaround until all the tapes are rotated. Most virtual tape engines are free.

Thanks for the information Supaplex. I was really trying to find a solution to this as to why these tapes are now not readable. They were readable before the migration for example daily incremental tapes were working with no issues and migration took place and that evening the issue started trying to use an incremental tape.

Its difficult to pinpoint which vendors can help the most as nothing has altered bar a different operating system, tin, and version of BE and as i said it all went fine with no issues until coming to use existing tapes. plus the other location where this was performed worked seamlessly with existing tapes

I was really trying to find a solution to this as to why these tapes are now not readable. They were readable before the migration for example daily incremental tapes were working with no issues and migration took place and that evening the issue started trying to use an incremental tape.

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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.

I'm preparing to upgrade the OS on my Backup Exec 21 server from Windows 2012 server to Windows 2016. Any gotchas I should be aware of? It's a vm, so I'll create vm snapshot and I'll back up the catalogs before the upgrade. I found this doc about NetBackup, but couldn't find one specifically for BE.

There are no knows issue for BE either so the same sentence applies here too:

There should be no issues with performing an upgrade of the server's operating system, as long as that operating system is supported as outlined in the Operating System Software Compatibility List.

In your specific case as it is a VM and you are taking a snapshot of it, there is no need for any further action.

For anyone else, I would recommend next to the catalog directory to copy / backup the Data folder within the Backup Exec directory as well.

I'm having hard time on how to upgrade my veritas backup exec version 20.3 to 21.3. I am eligible for downloading the latest version which is 21.3, my problem is this is my first time of doing it. Can someone please assist me on how to upgrade my veritas backup exec. Thank you so much

back in the day, i was a veritas reseller. i've had an nfr copy of backup exec 12.5 that i've been using since around 2010. it's worked fine through windows server 2019, performing upgrade over upgrade since i got it..

so i figured i would just go back to 2019, even though it was necessary to do a clean install. backup exec does the same thing, opens and then closes. don't know why it worked after upgrading from server 2016 to 2019, but it won't work now.

Hello,

I have recently upgraded 3 windows servers from Windows 2012 R2 to Windows 2019 Standard. These are 2 physical servers and one virtual server running under Vmware Esxi.

The Veritas server (version 23.0.1250.0) is on a separate physical machine running under Windows 2016 Standard. There are no other applications running on this system.

The upgraded servers have the Veritas client (version 23.0.1250.0) installed. There is also an installation of Bitdefender antivirus which does not report any problems.

The issue that I encounter is that the backup time of the Windows 2019 servers has **doubled or tripled** after the upgrade. There is no change in the backup jobs configuration or settings. The upgrade was smooth without any errors. There is no other change in network configuration, traffic, hardware or software. The servers were rebooted as required by the upgrade process.

The data backed up is a mix of MS Office documents, pdf files, SQL databases etc. The size of the data backed up has not changed. The backups do not show any errors, all complete succesfully, BUT the backup rate in megabytes per minute has decreased by 2 or 3 times. Backups that usually take 70-80 minutes now require 3 or more hours.

I have not being able to find any references related to this problem. I have run a number of tests troubleshooting the problem in the network settings of backup jobs, open file locks etc without success. I have disabled real time protection on the antivirus, but the problem remains.

I would appreciate any insight you may have,

Thank you,

To whom it may concern. We have Backup exec 20 and it was working fine and completely licensed until December 2019. But now Veritas requires that we renew the license yearly. I went to Vertitas licensing and downloaded another license and then followed the procedure outlined in this web site to remove the existing license and then re-add in the new license. -and-how-tos/how-to-renew-your-backup-exec-licensing

However, yesterday our backups stopped since apparently the license I installed on November 20, 2019 didn't work and the server was in Trial mode, which ran out yesterday. We are a small non profit and purchased the license through techsoup.org, so we got a NFR perpetual license, which in theory should be good forever.

After doing the procedure again last night, when I go to license, I enter the new license which is valid from yesterday until 2021, and then go through the procedure, however, when it says which product to apply the license to, there is nothing showing. After installing the license, when I go to Installation and Licensing --> License Information, it says "Your trial period has expired".

When I go to Installation and LIcensing --> License Contract Information, the screen is blank. Nothing is showing.

I fixed it myself by uninstalling and then reinstalling the entire Backup Exec system. This is a atrosity that I'm going to have to reinstall the backup system every time I renew the license year to year. Going to a yearly renewal of the license is one of the most stupid things I've seen from Veritas especially since it forces clients to have to reinstall to fix their system to apply the license. I hope you fix this in later releases of the product and go back to a perpetual license.

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