Timing issue postjob?

[tfloor]

Hi,

Don't know if this is a timing issue but I have 4 jobs with the same postjob bat script that is doing an attrib -A /S on the target veeam backup directory to remove the archive bit from all the files.

I saw today that for 1 job the biggest and the one that takes the most time to create the full synthetic on Friday, the post job was runned, see that in the log, but the archive bit was still active.

Could this be a timing issue while creating the vbk file?
I don't see this problem on the forward incrementals, but also not on the other jobs vbk files.

Let me know if I can do something to trace it.
Thanks.

[tfloor]

I can imagine this is not a very interesting topic

[Vitaliy S.]

Yeah, it's definitely not

It's hard to say what went wrong, but if it is a timing issue, I would suggest putting "sleep" command in the begging of your original script, to give synthetic full enough time to build a backup chain and then remove archive bit on the files.

[tfloor]

Yep i think that's the right thing todo. To see if it's a timing issue.
I will put a ping -n In the script to create a wait.

Thanks

[tfloor]

Ok, I have some little more information for this issue.

What i was seeing is:
- The attrib command was not able to remove the archive bit on the backup job directory\*.* when the .VBM file as also changed by veeam at the same date. (almost the same time as the finish time of the .vib or .vbk file).

Last night, for 1 out of 4 jobs it was failed, and exactly that directory has a changed .vbm file with a date/time of last night.

So when is a job that is running, modifying the .VBM File?
- it could be that the attrib command begins with the first file (the .vbm) then failed, and stops, (so the rest is also not done).

Someone who can give me the information, i think i'm on the right track,

dirlist of the files:

07-03-2012 16:36 <DIR> .
21-02-2012 10:09 <DIR> ..
07-03-2012 00:59 276.596 Backup VM Windows 2003.vbm
11-02-2012 06:26 195.303.778.304 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-11T020041.vbk
14-02-2012 01:19 13.880.538.112 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-13T235954.vib
15-02-2012 01:08 10.213.660.672 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-14T235940.vib
16-02-2012 01:12 10.596.919.296 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-15T235941.vib
17-02-2012 01:46 11.456.769.536 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-16T235943.vib
18-02-2012 08:16 195.617.853.440 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-18T022537.vbk
21-02-2012 00:59 13.270.295.552 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-20T234343.vib
21-02-2012 23:43 8.513.956.864 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-21T234356.vib
23-02-2012 01:00 12.136.800.768 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-22T234355.vib
24-02-2012 00:59 10.358.923.776 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-23T234349.vib
25-02-2012 08:00 195.400.808.960 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-25T020449.vbk
28-02-2012 01:16 23.262.713.856 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-27T234357.vib
29-02-2012 01:01 10.345.297.920 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-28T234357.vib
01-03-2012 01:04 9.865.049.600 Backup VM Windows 20032012-02-29T234357.vib
02-03-2012 01:05 10.775.738.368 Backup VM Windows 20032012-03-01T234354.vib
03-03-2012 08:56 195.654.048.256 Backup VM Windows 20032012-03-03T021030.vbk
06-03-2012 01:20 12.966.226.432 Backup VM Windows 20032012-03-05T234345.vib
07-03-2012 01:05 9.848.808.960 Backup VM Windows 20032012-03-06T234349.vib

the last file had the archive bit on. (and the .vbm had the same date)... hmmmmm

Thanks
Tristan.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hmm...VBM file modification should happen at the end of the job, so looks like you've nailed it. Sleep command should definitely help here.

[tfloor]

Ah i see, thanks.

I've done some modifications to the post-job script... now i have add the timeout command, and instead of *.* i will first tried every single extensions seperate.

In Windows Server 2008 R2, the command to be used is "timeout" which replaces "sleep"
C:\Windows\System32\timeout.exe /T 10 /nobreak


looks like:


:: "remove archive bit from files, so that backup exec will not backup too much. [working set mode]"
timeout /T 60 /nobreak
attrib -A /S \\wdl1\backup\veeam\*.vbk
timeout /T 60 /nobreak
attrib -A /S \\wdl1\backup\veeam\*.vib
timeout /T 60 /nobreak
attrib -A /S \\wdl1\backup\veeam\*.vrb
timeout /T 60 /nobreak
attrib -A /S \\wdl1\backup\veeam\*.vbm
timeout /T 60 /nobreak
attrib -A /S \\wdl1\backup\veeam\*.*

So i will report later, if this is a working solution.
I don't know what attrib can do with locked files, or for how long veeam will lock the file on it's own job.

Regards,
Tristan

[Cokovic]

Tristan could you explain me your setup? Just wondering why you need to remove the archive bit.

I'm asking cause i'm running a similar setup at a customers site (also with Backup Exec) and it works fine for me without the need to remove any archive bit.

[tfloor]

I'm using forward incremental with 14 restore points.
synthetic full on friday.
incrementals monday - thursday
start times are 23:40, one job concurrent.
Backup to LTO4 (change the tapes each day)
backup to LTO is scheduled on 6 o clock in the morning on monday - thursday for the VIB's.
backup to LTO is scheduled on 1:00 am on sunday for the VBK's.

Backup exec jobs for monday - thursday are set on "daily", *.vib
Backup exec jobs for friday are set on "working set 3 days", but will by default also backup everything with the archive bit set. SO that's why i want to remove it.

There are a lot of questions about backup exec against veeam, but no-one gives a good solution, so i make one for myself.
It's very depending on your situation.
How do you have the setup?

[tfloor]

Grrr the results for the new script with timeout command to remove the archive bit with attrib are still not succefull. this time another job 1 file has still the archive bit ON.

:S

[Cokovic]

Ah ok i see.

The setup i use at the customer looks like this:

Forward incrementals with 7 restore points (lack of storage space).
Synthetic full on saturday. Also ticked the box "Transform previous full backup chains into rollbacks" to keep only one full backup on disk.
Incrementals from sunday - friday.
Start time for the VMs is between 17:00 and 22:00 o'clock.
Backup to LTO4 tapeloader (so no need to change tapes daily )
Backup to tape is scheduled at 4 o'clock in the morning every day.

Got three BackupExec jobs running created by policy. Monthly full (last day of month), Weekly full and daily inc. Always with archive bit reset. Monthly full superseeds weekly full if they got the same start time.

Total size on weekly full is about 700GB. Daily incrementals have about 25GB.

[tfloor]

Thanks for you post,

Again, your environment is different than mine, so i can't copy your setup, and that's what the config make difficult.
But i hope to get rid of the tape backup next year. Only replication and backup to disk on another location