Details of the Capacity Usage Calculation within Backup Exec

Article: 100015943
Last Published: 2022-02-09
Ratings: 5 6
Product(s): Backup Exec

Problem


Capacity licensing is based on the aggregate amount of uncompressed, non-deduplicated data residing on the "front-end" production systems to be protected. Licenses are available on a per terabyte basis where a terabyte is defined is 1,024 gigabytes, and when purchasing licenses the expected data growth within the environment should be included in the initial purchase.

If using the Gold, Silver, Bronze, Capacity or the Capacity Edition Lite editions Backup Exec monitors the current 'front-end' terabytes protected by backup jobs. This calculation is used both to display the "Amount of licensed capacity used" in the "License and Maintenance Contracts" section of the Home screen within the Backup Exec Administration Console, and to provide alerts to the administrator should the current licensed capacity be exceeded.

This document discusses how the capacity is calculated and answers some frequently asked questions.

Error Message

V-79-57344-49200 - Cannot run job. Your current capacity usage has significantly exceeded your licensed capacity. To increase the licensed capacity, contact your software provider to obtain a new license with an upgraded capacity.

0xe000c030 - The servers capacity usage has exceeded its licensed capacity. Backup jobs will fail until capacity usage drops below the licensed capacity.

UMI Code: V-79-57344-49200

UMI Code: V-379-58054

Solution

How the capacity used is calculated
Backup Exec uses the byte counts from the job history records inside the Backup Exec Database (BEDB) to calculate and update, on a daily basis, the current capacity usage. 

  1. From the history data, a list of non-delegated, successful, full backup jobs run in last 30 days is generated. (Note: delegated jobs would be those sent from a Central Administration Server (CAS) to a Managed Backup Exec server (MBE) in a CASO environment)
  2. From the job history data, a list of all protected resources created by full backup jobs is generated where a resource (sometimes known as a backup set) is an object such as servername\c: or servername\ExchangeMailboxDB etc. Note: servername on its own is not a resource in this context.
  3. The above two lists are then used to retrieve, from the history data, a byte count result for the largest full backup (for Backup Exec 20.x and later) OR the last full backup (for Backup Exec 16.x or earlier) against each protected resource.
  4. The results are then totaled to return the capacity usage figures for the Backup Exec Server.

More details about various types of Backup Exec editions are documented in BE Licensing Guide - Backup Exec Licensing Guide 

 

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) relating to the capacity calculation

Q1: Will my backup jobs fail if the current licensed capacity is exceeded?
A1: For Backup Exec 20.x or later if the capacity used exceeds 115% of installed licenses for more than 30 days, backup jobs will fail. For Backup Exec 16.x and earlier, or Backup Exec 20.x environments that are below 115% use, backup jobs will not fail and will continue to run. All versions generate licensing alerts within the Backup Exec Administration Console when the licensed count is exceeded.

Q2: If a backup job is deleted does this impact the capacity calculations?
A2: No, as the calculation is based on the last 30 days of job history records inside the BEDB.

Q3: What happens if server is retired and no longer backed up or the backup job definition for a specific server is deleted.?
A3: The backup history of the server will still be included in the capacity calculations for 30 days and after that will automatically be removed from the calculation

Q4: Is the capacity calculation based on the last full backup or the last full recovery chain (which would include differential or incremental backups)?
A4: The calculation is based on the largest or last full backup, depending on the Backup Exec version (and not the chain), new data added to the server that has been protected by differential or incremental backups will only be included in the calculation after a new full job is run.

Q5: If full backups of the same server are run twice within 30 days, does the capacity usage approximately double?
A5: No because ONLY the largest or the last full backup within 30 days is counted. The total of all full backup jobs for one resource, within 30 days, is not used by the calculation

Q6: If some data is deleted from a server resource, is this reduction matched in the capacity calculations?
Q6: For Backup Exec 20.x and later: No as the largest full backup in the last 30 days is used. For Backup Exec 16.x and earlier, Yes, whether the overall protected data quantity decreases or increases, the change will be seen after the next full backup

Q7: If only part of a resource is protected by a full backup (for instance D:\Subfolder instead of the complete D:) how does this affect the capacity calculation?
A7: This will calculate the protected capacity for the resource based on that job and not the full content of the resource. This result will be valid if the rest of the resource is not protected by another job, however will be invalid (reading low) if the backup of the complete resource runs first and then a second backup runs to specifically protect just the partial data selection. The same calculation error (low result) will be seen if half a resource is backed up by one full backup job and the other half of the same resource is protected by a different full backup job

Q8: Do One-Time backups also count or only scheduled backups?
A8: A One-Time backup job still counts as a full backup, as such if the One-Time is also the last full backup, the statistics from that job will be used for the capacity calculation

Q9: Does the failure of a full backup job affect the calculations?
A9: No, the capacity calculation will continue to use the statistics from the last successful (or completed with exceptions) full backup job and ignore the details from the failed job.

Q10: If a licensing alert is being received because within the last 30 days a server was decommissioned and the data was relocated to a new or different protected server, should extra licensing be purchased or can the alert be ignored for 30 days?
A10: As long as the original server has been decommissioned and there is no intention to back that server up again in the future, then the alert message can be ignored. Note: if it continues beyond 30 days since decommissioning then the front end data has probably grown and further licenses will be needed.

Q11: If the job histories are manually deleted from the Backup Exec Administration Console or the setting for "Keep job history data for specified number of days" is set to less than 30, what is the effect on the capacity calculation?
A11: For Backup Exec 16.x and older, This could cause a falsely low reading for the capacity calculation, although could be used to correct the calculation against the retirement of a specific server in order to disable the license alerts for exceeding capacity. It would also mean you no longer have traceability of when jobs ran in terms of auditing. Due to Backup Exec 20.x and later enforcing valid capacity licensing (against 115% total use), this behaviour may be different in the newer versions of Backup Exec.

Q12: In a CASO environment, does the capacity calculation on the CAS server include jobs that ran on MBE servers?
A12: No the calculation specifically looks for non-delegated jobs, and as such the MBE servers would have their own capacity licenses applied and show their own statistics for capacity usage. No centralized view of Capacity Usage is available.  Note: currently there is an ongoing investigation against an issue with the Capacity Usage statistics reading low in a CASO environment

Q13: In a CASO environment, if more than one Backup Exec Server (CAS or MBE) is used to backup the same resource from another server will the byte count for that resource only be counted once?
A13: Because the calculation is performed separately against each Backup Exec Server, this will result in the byte count for the resources being counted twice.

Q14: In a CASO environment, with optimized duplication and remote duplication to tape, how is the Capacity Usage calculated?
A14: As Duplicate jobs are recorded in the BEDB as their own type of job, the byte counts from duplicate jobs are not included in the Capacity Usage calculations

Q15: Why would a  Capacity Edition Lite 2 to 5 TB license, alert for not enough capacity licenses when I am below 5TB?
A15: Capacity Edition licences are sold in increments of 1TB at a time with some tier based discounting depending on how many are purchased in the same purchase order. As such to protect up to 4TB, 4 Capacity Edition 2-5TB licenses would be needed.  However if the environment increases to over 4TB of front end data, then as only 4TB was purchased even though the license name mentioned 5, another 1TB license will be needed and alerts will be received. These discount tiers are available against both the full and lite Capacity Editions and at the time this article was authored are available in "2 to 5TB", "6 to16TB", "16 to 25TB" and "26TB plus" tiers that are all sold as multiples of 1TB. 

Q16: In Backup Exec 20.1, I used the option, against 3 backup sets, to "Remove from Capacity Usage Calculation", however this has made almost no difference to my overall used capacity count, why?
A16: If you use this option to delete backup sets that are part of a recurring job and more than 3 full backups, within 30 days, of that same resource exist then as Backup Exec (20.x and later) calculates the usage against the largest backup set in last 30 days, then one of the other backup sets of the same resource will still be included in the count. Note: the "Remove from Capacity Usage Calculation" ability is intended to allow the removal of backup sets created by test jobs, that are not expected to be recurring jobs. It is not suitable to reset the counts for regular jobs against decommissioned servers or jobs that are surplus to ongoing requirements (the size of such backup sets will be automatically removed from the usage calculations after 30 days.)

Q17: Would backup of deduplication storage folder which contains the backup set be considered in the capacity calculation?
A17: Yes. It is getting backed up under a different resource. In case this needs to be omitted from calculation the steps mentioned in Q16 can be followed to remove it from capacity calculation.

Q18: Is Virtual Machine based backup and remote agent based backup of the same server considered one time when GRT is enabled ?
A18: Yes but a limitation exists where system state or some utility partition may be used in the capacity calculation. It is recommended to either take a remote agent based backup or virtual machine GRT based backup.
 

References

Etrack : 3841270

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