|
|
 Posted 9/8/2009 8:10:46 AM |
|
|
Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/10/2009 12:15:15 PM
Posts: 3,
Visits: 9
|
|
| I am really struggling with a customer with a Win2K Advanced Server. I have NovaBACKUP Business Essentials installed and working great for the local backups. I wanted to used the off-site backup capability as well, but it has been a VERY difficult road to go down. My client has roughly 40GB that they want backed up off-site through a slow DSL connection. I contacted tech support and they recommended shipping a USB hard drive to the off-site storage vendor to "pre-load" the backup and then just have NovaBACKUP send over the changes. My customer wanted none of that, so I was ready to go with MozyPRO instead for online backup. However, I called Staunch Systems (one of the NovaBACKUP off-site storage vendors) and talked with them for a while. They said they wouldn't bill our credit card until the entire 40GB upload arrived on their servers. Nice. So, I set up a 50GB account with Staunch Systems and then configured the backup to go off-site which was pretty straightforward. I got 30+GB into the upload when the connection failed (naturally). It should be noted that while this 10-day backup to the off-site storage was going on, no other local backups were happening. THAT'S NOT GOOD. I have tried to rerun the off-site backup job since since it failed. According to tech support, it should send over only the bits that have changed as well as new files. In theory, it should happen pretty quickly since most of the 40GB is rather static and should change too much. Anyway, its been three days since I restarted the job and NovaBACKUP is just sitting there saying "Creating Image" and nothing else. Of course, once again, while this is running, no other daily backups are going on. Does anyone know what "Creating Image" means? Is it just stuck in a loop and I should cancel this? I see nothing in the documentation and nothing online. Would it have been better to create a number of smaller off-site backup jobs rather than try to use one backup job for the entire 40GB? Now that I have 30+GB already off-site, can I create smaller off-site backup jobs that will look at the data that is already on the off-site storage server, or was that effort wasted and I should just delete what is already there? Is there a "Best Practices for NovaBACKUP Off-site Backups" document? The documentation didn't seem to address off-site backups very well other than to say you can create them (unless of course I messed it). Great concept to have one product that can do local, off-site and disaster recovery (baremetal) backups. However, both my customer and I are getting ready to throw in the towel on the off-site backup side of NovaBACKUP. Sorry for being so long winded, but I wanted to give the whole story. Any help is greatly appreciated.
|
|
|
|
| Posted 9/8/2009 8:39:07 AM |
|
|
NovaStor Employee
Group: NovaStor Employee
Last Login: 7/9/2010 1:15:29 AM
Posts: 2,036,
Visits: 6,378
|
|
My client has roughly 40GB that they want backed up off-site through a slow DSL connection. I contacted tech support and they recommended shipping a USB hard drive to the off-site storage vendor to "pre-load" the backup and then just have NovaBACKUP send over the changes. My customer wanted none of that, so I was ready to go with MozyPRO instead for online backup.
We will have a solution for this issue for a seed backup 'soon', like expect it within the next month or so.
It should be noted that while this 10-day backup to the off-site storage was going on, no other local backups were happening. THAT'S NOT GOOD.
You are right that isn't good, the scheduling and engine of the software currently is a one at a time type of system. Hopefully with the new seed option that is coming this will reduce the issue this is causing.
Does anyone know what "Creating Image" means? Is it just stuck in a loop and I should cancel this?
Do you happen to have a disaster recovery backup scheduled? That is what this is sounding like it is doing.
What I would suggest doing is the following:
1) Close NovaBACKUP
2) Go into windows task manager and kill the nsservice.exe task.
3) Go to c:\documents and settings\all users\application data\NovaStor\NovaStor NovaBACKUP\data\schedules and rename the schedule.dat file to like savedschedule.dat. (This file contains ALL of your schedules of your scripts)
4) Open the NovaBACKUP software (it will automatically start that service) and manually run your local backup so you have a more recent local backup, and then after that is done start that online backup again and it should only send the new/changed files.
5) Then go ahead and either just reschedule your backups or stop the NovaBACKUP service in windows services and rename that savedschedule.dat to schedule.dat.
Nathan Fouarge
Nathan Fouarge
NovaStor Professional Services Manager
|
|
|
|
| Posted 9/8/2009 9:45:09 AM |
|
|
Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/10/2009 12:15:15 PM
Posts: 3,
Visits: 9
|
|
| Thanks for the quick reply. ################# We will have a solution for this issue for a seed backup 'soon', like expect it within the next month or so.
##################
The "seed" backup sounds like it would be a welcome addition. I will keep my eyes open to look for it and see exactly what it will provide (especially as it applies to the one backup at a time issue). ################## Do you happen to have a disaster recovery backup scheduled? ################### As far as the "Creating Image" situation, yes, I did have a scheduled disaster recovery backup. I am at the customer site now and will follow your suggested steps. Unfortunaately, the nsservice.exe could not be stopped, so I have resorted to restarting the server. Hopefully, then I will be able to kill the service and then follow the rest of your steps. I presume that you don't see any issue with me rerunning the one large off-site backup job since you didn't suggest chopping the off-site backups into a bunch of smaller jobs. So I will rerun that job after making my local backup as you suggested. I'll let you know how I make out.
|
|
|
|
| Posted 9/10/2009 5:58:54 AM |
|
|
Forum Newbie
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 9/10/2009 12:15:15 PM
Posts: 3,
Visits: 9
|
|
| Things were looking pretty good after I followed your instructions. I made the local backup, and then started up the online backup. It went pretty quickly for the first 21GB or so (out of the 40 it needed to do), so I assume that it was just sending updates to the data that had already been uploaded prior to the connection dropping. Then it took a day just to go from 21GB to 22GB and it (nsservice.exe) was using 100% of the CPU. After getting calls from my customer, I stopped the backup job (and the CPU utilzation immediately dropped to normal levels). I then waited until late evening when my customer was closed for the day and then I started the backup job again. It appeared to start OK, and I saw the message about "getting the file list from the server, this may take a while". I checked back on it this morning (after about 8 hours) and the same message was there and not a single file was backed up. I stopped the job, but the message never went away. I had to restart the server. At this point, my customer is really not wanting to proceed with the NovaBACKUP off-site backup. I am tending to agree as I really can't keep spending the time watching the process and I certainly don't want my customer to get a bad feeling about NovaBACKUP in general because of the difficulties with the off-site component. They have been happy thus far with the local backup. Finally, my two questions... Any thoughts as to why I was getting 100% CPU utilization when doing the off-site backup? Is it normal to take 8+ hours of getting the file list from the server? While the answers may not help the situation with the current customer, I have other customers who I would still like to get this working for.
|
|
|
|