Netware Arcserve 9 - backup to ATA/IDE drives?

[domburi]

I'd like to build a Netware 6 / Arcserve 9 box that backs up to IDE drives. Currently I have an Adaptec 2400a RAID card with a few removeable cages hooked up to it.

However Arcserve won't recognize the 2400a card or its attached devices (which are netware volumes)as 'registered'. How do I get Arcserve to recognize them? Is it possible? Impossible? Should I be attacking this from another angle - such as having Arcserve back up to a remote Windows box with the drives?

I just have no idea how to go about doing this. I don't want to use tape anymore, I want to back up to IDE disks instead. Any thoughts? Thanks!

 

[Cyklops]

You have to create a 'file system device' to make this work. Go to the Device configuration Wizard for this (I use a cross platform Windows manager, I'm not sure if this is the same for the manager that comes with ARCserve 9 for NetWare) . As long as the volume is visible as a mapped drive you can just browse to the location.
With ARCserve for NetWare there is a 4GB limitation per File System Device.

Hope I'm clear

regards

 

[domburi]

Yes, I understand. When I installed Arcserve I created a file system device for two test volumes that I had created - one of which was currently mounted in the server.

However when I load Arcserve I get the following error:
CANWPADB: Binding : ADAPTER [BKSTROSM.HAM] / [1]
CANWPADB: DEVICE[0] : WDC WD2000JB-00DUA3 (190782 MB) Not Registered
CANWPADB: No valid Adapters found ... unloading.

And Arcserve fails to load so I cannot access the Device Manager. I have to reinstall to make any configuration change.

 

[terry712]

i cant undersatnd why you would want to back up to disk?

are you going to rotate the disks or just keep over writing

 

[Cyklops]

When there is no tape drive attached the loading will always fail. I'm not sure if you there is some config setting on how to avoid this. Maybe you can workaround by connecting an old tape drive to the server in order to complete the loading of ARCserve

regards

 

[domburi]

Ok, THAT makes sense. I do have an old tape drive and SCSI card... that's perfect.

Terry, I was evaluating the cost of backing up 150GB of data onto tape or onto disk. Hard Drives are way cheaper! And faster! I'm going to (this is the plan anyway) buy 15 200GB Western Digital Special Edition drives for $160 each and put them in removable cages. Then I'll pop the drive out each night like I do my tapes. I'll get like 100GB extra storage for $1000's less. It seems too good to be true.

 

[Cyklops]

It is true that disk becomes cheaper all the time. The problem with disk is that using disk for off-site storage is more vulnerable than tapes. But when you use these 15 harddisks to keep 15 days of backups you've built in the redundancy so this is OK.
By the way, you can also use ARCserve to copy from disk to disk with a mirror setting: takes few reasources and time and has the advantage that you don't have to restore data. The copy is available in seconds.

regards

 

[terry712]

sounds feasible

true about costs i suppose and it's easier to restore as well as getting data from arcserve tapes is sometimes a pain especially when it's not merged

 

[domburi]

Ok, I setup the device using the Device Configuration Wizard but, they don't appear when trying to add a device to the device card in the Device Manager (under Device Group Configuration) Where should the devices show up in ArcServe Manager?

When I went back to the Device Configuration and reapplied the path to the device, it says "Failed to set information about File System Devices Error:0"

 

[Cyklops]

The tape should just show up as 'blank media' under a
'CAFSadapter'.
Did you configure the directory for backup to disk local or remote ??

regards

 

[domburi]

Its set to backup to a Local Netware Volume. I do see an 'FSAdapter' but there is no media under it, nor can I assign any.

 

[domburi]

I deleted all File System Devices using the Device Config wizard. Now I cannot add any back in.

I have two volumes right now 'backup1' and 'backup2' they are both mounted as NSS volumes and accessible from the Client where I'm running Arcserve Manager.

When I go into the Device Config Manager I try to create a new File Device, and point it to 'backup1:\'. It says, Invalid Folder name. So I create a folder called 'backup' in the root of the Backup1 volume and point the new File Device to 'backup1:\backup'

I get the following error:
"Failed to set information about File System Devices. (Error:0)"

I am completely stumped.

 

[supertitleman]

ArcServe makes even the easiest tasks difficult and confusing. I use both ArcServe and Back-up Exec daily and can feel my blood pressure rise everytime I want to use ArcServe to do anything *new*, such as back-up to IDE/ATA/REMOVABLE hard drives.

With Back-up Exec, it's a 1 minute process to create a new "Backup-to-disk Folder" and point that folder anywhere on your network. I've been trying to achieve the same thing with ArcServe for a week.

Why does it have to be so difficult to do something so simple????

From reading the posts, it is aparent that there really is no straight-forward method to back-up to IDE/ATA drives with ArcServe. Is that true?

 

[domburi]

You have definitely hit the nail on the head. I think the fact that I'm using Netware makes the complication factor go through the roof!

My goal is to have a set of 18 or so removable volumes that I can rotate thru on a daily,weekly,monthly basis much in the same way as I currently use tape.

Getting Arcserve to just backup to a single volume is the very first step! The second is seeming more and more impossible - Arcserve's Device Configuration 'Wizard' does not let you 'Apply' the changes if it can't find ALL of the devices you've configured. It will give an error.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Does anyone know a straightforward way to configure Arcserve to backup to a Netware Volume?? I'm having no success.