Consolidated Backup and Backup Exec Questions

[Jay Griffin]

I have VCB working with Backup Exec 11d. My VCB Proxy is on the same server as BE.

I have a couple of questions:

1) Any idea why I would get this error in the BE logs when doing a file-level backup?

Backup- C: Directory mnt\BDC1\digits\1\WINDOWS\SYSVOL\staging areas\burke.com\ was not found, or could not be accessed.

None of the files or subdirectories contained within will be backed up.

Directory mnt\BDC1\digits\1\WINDOWS\SYSVOL\sysvol\burke.com\ was not found, or could not be accessed.

None of the files or subdirectories contained within will be backed up.

2) What backup strategy do you use for file-level vs. image-level? Can you do an incremental for file-level? I was considering doing an file-level incremental M-F; a Full file-level on Sat; and a image-level on Sunday.

3) Any ideas on why my image-level backup will not work? In the job I added to the selection BDC1-FullVM. On the browse-start I listed the job name (VMBackup) and BDC1-FullVM. It fails. When I go to a command prompt and run Browse-start.bat VMBACKUP BDC1-FullVM it immediately returns to the command prompt without running anything and without any errors. If I run Browse-start.bat VMBACKUP BDC1 I get the snapshot of BDC1 mounted in C:\MNT\BDC1.

4) Is a file-level backup backing the machine up two times? C:\mnt\BDC1\digits and C:\mnt\BDC1\letters

Thanks for your help.

jaygriffin

[Jay Griffin]

Re-reading the document I think I figured out #4

#4 -- In the select, put C:\mnt\BDC1\letters instead of just C:\mnt\BDC1

When I ran for letters -- I got this error:

Backup- C: Directory mnt\BDC1\letters\C\WINDOWS\SYSVOL\staging areas\burke.com\ was not found, or could not be accessed.

None of the files or subdirectories contained within will be backed up.

Directory mnt\BDC1\letters\C\WINDOWS\SYSVOL\sysvol\burke.com\ was not found, or could not be accessed.

None of the files or subdirectories contained within will be backed up.

Message was edited by:

jaygriffin

[Jay Griffin]

Figured out issue #3 -- instead of using Browse-start.bat, I used pre-backup.bat.

I didn't see anywhere in the instructions where it said to do that. But I read some people on the forums here talking about pre-backup.bat, so I tried it.

Anyone know the difference between browse-start.bat and pre-backup.bat?

[shaaad]

Not me, but it works! Now If I can just determine why the job backed up roughly 2.2GB instead of the entire VM.

[virtualdud3]

I believe that the browse-start.bat "mounts" the desired VM under the C:\mnt (or whatever directory is specified in config.js), thus allowing the backup agent to backup the drive/file(s) from the VM.

The pre-backup.bat actually backs-up the full VM (as opposed to just creating the mount point).

I am not entirely sure of your question; I do know that the BackupExec VCB Interoperability Module documentation can be kind of difficult to follow (at least it was for me).

The most important thing I found is that for ANY sort of file-level backup to complete, you first HAVE to successfully perform/run the "C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Consolidated Backup\backupexec\browse-start " to complete successfully.

The "browse-start.bat" command mounts the VMs' virtual disks under the C:\mnt\ (again, by default) of the VCB proxy, and you then browse to the files (on the VMs disk) as "Backup Selections", just as you would browse to any other file you are backing up.

If I am reading your question properly, it appears that the browse-start.bat is not completing successfully, therefore the VMs disk's are not being mounted underneath C:\mnt, and therefore you are not able to select these files to backup through the Backupexec GUI.

But, I may be misunderstanding your question/situation and you may already know all of the above.

[shaaad]

I started a new thread to explain, Thanks so much for asking!

http://communities.vmware.com/message/773692

[sparitops]

Hello All,

We are using VCB with Backup Exec 12 and we are experiencing the same error message in the job log for the C:\windows\sysvol\staging areas\domainname directory on two of our domain controllers, stating that none of the files or subdirectorires contained within will be backed up. Symantec said to just exclude the directory, but I am not accepting that answer. Thanks for any help in advance.

[pjcreese]

You cannot backup those directories because of Windows Server protecting those directories on your domain controlling servers. In order to backup those directories, you'd need an agent like:

under Backup Exec Agent for Active Directory

You cannot even browse those directories in Windows Explorer on the actual server themselves.

Hence, Symantec's recommendation is correct. Exclude the directories.

[ederaco]

Ive been testing VCB for the last 3 months, very tricky. browse-start command is away of mounting manually; in your backupExec after running this command will show what VM has been mounted, this is more like a testing ground. You can run a backup at file level for this. The Pre-Backup is a script backup exec uses to mount a vm for backup, what i have notice is that it actually uses the browse start bat and other scripts to go forward with processing a backup. I aslo had errors when mounting backups similar to yours. I still had a snapshot or partial snapshot mounted and this returned the same error. I ran vcbcleanup.bat to clean up the folder, then ran a backup and it worked correctly.