Backup Exec Best Practices

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Product(s): Backup Exec (20.0)
  1. Backup Exec Best Practices
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      Best practices for using hot-pluggable devices such as USB devices in a drive rotation strategy
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Best practices for using hot-pluggable devices such as USB devices in a drive rotation strategy

Best practices include tips and recommendations to help you effectively use hot-pluggable devices in Backup Exec. For more information about using storage devices in Backup Exec, see the Backup Exec Administrator's Guide.

The following best practices apply to using hot-pluggable devices in Backup Exec:

  • Do not run incremental Granular Recovery Technology (GRT)-enabled backups if you back up to hot-pluggable devices that you rotate.

  • If you send differential backups to hot-pluggable devices that you rotate, then when the differential backups run, you must keep the hot-pluggable device that contains the last full backup attached to the server.

  • If your environment contains devices to which vendors have assigned the same disk signature, you should check if a new hot-pluggable device has the same disk signature as another. To check for identical disk signatures, configure the devices one at a time. After you configure a device, view the Storage tab in the Backup Exec administration console and check if any devices that were previously configured are now online. If so, then most likely that device has the same disk signature as another device. Use the UNIQUEID DISK command in DISKPART to manually set each hot-pluggable device to a different disk signature.

    Alternatively, you can attach all of the hot-pluggable devices and bring them online at the same time. You can attache the devices to the server if there are enough free ports, or attach the devices to a hub.

  • Configure only one hot-pluggable device per disk storage. Do not configure all of your hot-pluggable devices on one disk storage.

  • Create a storage pool just for the hot-pluggable devices that you want to use in a rotation strategy. Specify the storage pool as the storage destination when you run backups.

  • If you change the default Windows setting for the removal policy in the properties of the disk in Device Manager, you should use the Safely Remove Hardware notification tray icon to disconnect the hot-pluggable device safely.

    • For Windows Server 2008 R2/2012/2012 R2, the default setting is called Quick Removal.

    • For Windows Server 2003/2008, the default setting is called Optimize for quick removal.

Note:

Be aware that when you unplug a hot-pluggable device, Backup Exec sends an alert that the device is offline; this is normal and expected.