And so it begins...

So here we are with a completely failing Backup Exec setup. As usual, it's having random fits and failures. This weekend was going quite well, or rather, "well" in backup exec terms.

We had 1 out of 3 media servers running, but the one that was running was happily dealing with jobs it was assigned, until 16:30, and then, for no reason at all as far as we can see, it did the usual "Server Paused" thing. You know, the one where it dumps jobs you've had running for hours for no real reason, and just sits like a lame duck until you reboot it (because nothing else works).

Meanwhile box number 2 is still in "paused" status via the CASO tool, because hell, asking is to be enabled causes jobs to just be sent into an infinite loop of "Queued" and "Ready, On Hold" mixed with a load of failures. Good stuff Symantec.

Box number 3 however is really screwed. We've ended up having to reinstall and then when that failed, uninstall, and reinstall from scratch. Of course, that's really upset things, because despite following the instructions, the orphaned "managed media server" is now stuck on the CASO box, as is the new reinstalled one of the same, and all the non-existant "Backup to Disk" drives are too, you know, for good measure which it steadfastly refuses to remove.

No point calling Symantec for support, they never actually have an answer unless it's the most basic of problems.

So what shall we do?

I'm going to uninstall box 2 completely, rename the box on the network so it can't be confused anymore, reinstall, service pack 4 Backup Exec 10d and then configure it - once that's done I'll try a backup job, and if that runs (yeah, because it's so likely to work first time...) I'll try putting it onto managed media server mode so we can actually use it properly.

This is the first post here, but, inspired by a guy ( see http://y33dave.wordpress.com/%20) who eventually ditched Backup Exec for CommVault who maintained a blog of the miserable journey he went on we'll be keeping this Backup Exec Hell blog going...