Disaster Recovery Setup

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At work we have upgraded our storage system to HP StorageWorks MSL4048 using Backup Exe 12.5 running on Windows 2008 enterprise edition. The tape media are HP 1.6TB RW Ultrium LTO 4.

I love the fact you can fit in 48 tapes on the go

The issue is that at the moment when I try to add rewritable tapes it does not let me open the door stating locked by host system.

Well for the most part I'd go to Backup Exe, click on the device tab and right click on unit holding the tapes and select unlock. The unlock works brilliantly sometimes and other times just doesn't work.

I find it quite annoying as I'd have to power the unit down, restart the unit only to be presented with a offline status. I am not too sure if this is a hardware bug or the Backup Exe software issue or whatever.

Well I suppose there's someone our there who has better experience using these as I still think it's a superb system apart from the above mentioned issues.

Our tapes are labelled week 1, 2, 3 and so on using differential backups, normal and month ending formats.

The labelling side of things is another nightmare as I have to write on the little stickie labels for reference etc.

The tapes are then group in two naming conventions one being "Data" and the other "Apps and "Systems".

I believe there is a better way of doing these than having to have pen written on the label and then highlighted with a green or purple colour. I hear someone say just type the info on a printable label - which is what I would welcome if there is a label as suitable for this.

Well enough ranting about doing what I love doing as well as getting paid for it. So what's your disaster recovery system like etc?.

 

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Why can't you use the barcode labels that came with the tapes?

What drivers are you using for the autoloader?

What patch version of Backup Exec 12.5 are you running?

Backup Exec was ruined by Slimeantics when they bought Veritas a few years ago IMO. They've implemented a load of crap, useless changes, their live update never works properly, the UI is buggy in the extreme and they STILL haven't fixed the issue where jobs containing multiple resources hang on one server and then just sit there. Their 'support' is utterly laughable - a month ago they actually told me a 'fix' for the above issue was to run seperate jobs for each server - LMFAO @ the possibility of me creating and scheduling 47 seperate backup jobs each weekend...

 

That's like trying to open a can of worms which am trying to avoid, and to be honest I don't trust the service patch and updates from Backup Exe Veritas web site.

I drivers for one have not been upgrated for over a few months now as I fear the thought of having to re-configure the backp schedule and server configures

However, how do you reuse each label after the initial ones that come with the tapes are finished. I currently use avery labels and cut each to fit the tape barcode section.

If you were to change from Backup Exe which software would you go for?

 

To be fair this isn't really a DR setup, more of a Backup stratergy.

Now if you were using Symantec Intelligent Disaster Recovery (IDR) or DPM with the System Recovery Tool (SRT) and you were talking about replicated SAN and Hosted VM environments then that's a Disaster Recovery environment.

As far as previous DRPs (or BCP) go, replicated SAN's or Servers using DFS as well as hosted HA ESX servers.

BCP is much more than IT though and does cover the complete Business Continuity approach.

 

Very true it's a backup strategy, but without a backup strategy and a disaster occurs then would have no where to turn to. I see your point though which is very valid, just that I named the title somewhat eye catching