Upgrade backup exec 8.6 to BE 9.1

[SuperNoob]

Hi there,

First I have search the forum for upgrading and nothing found, on Google there are only links to webshop and several site who want so sell you this product.

My questions are
We want to upgrade BE 8.6 to BE 9.1. on our exchange server.
On the BE 8.6 there is no backup exchange agent installed, so this is the first time that we use the Backup Exec 9.1 exchange agent.

-Before to made an upgrade are there things that we must do or check.

thx.

 

[justin2000]

There is nothing you have to do special - just make sure the server have the pre-requisites on it and you should be fine.

The upgrade will work straight over the top, and include the Exchange agent as part of the install.
When it asks you if you want to take a backup of the old data, say yes to this - it is critical to do this, just in case the upgrade doesn't work, then you will be able to go back to 8.6 and try again.

 

[SuperNoob]

Justin2000,

Thanks for your reply.
Ok so we've got nothing to worry about.
There is only one thing that I'm anxious about; the logfiles in MDBDATA. I was not able to get rid of the logfiles with the default w2kbackup, so the log files in MDBDATA growth bigger and bigger.
So it was vital to get rid off the log files, so i moved the first 800mb to another disk.
When we do an full backup, only then the logfiles can be cleared.
But must I move the logfiles back to there original place. I have 3gb filled with logfiles and my diskspace is running out.

thanks,

 

[SuperNetMan]

I recently upgraded from 8.6 to 9.1 and I'm beginning to be very sorry I did.

9.x is a complete re-write of the software and is full of many major changes to the way B.E. works. First of all, it installs MSDE (desktop version of SQL Server) onto the machine without informing you of the consequences of doing this. MSDE will consume a large amount of system memory unless you also have a full version of SQL Server 2000 so that you can use the management tool to tune MSDE to limit the amount of memory it consumes. Secondly, I've been having endless problems getting good clean backups due to multitudes of problems with 9.1 unable to correctly identify when a tape cart is appendable or not. Thirdly, it seems to think that some of my DLT carts suddenly have 16.0TB capacity, and this will totally corrupt the current backup job that's writing to them. Fourthly, I'm experiencing only about 50% of the thruput from remote agents that I used to get with 8.6. I'm getting no help from Veritas support on these issues either.

I can go on and on with more examples of problems, but my advice to you is that unless you're migrating to Windows 2003 and thus 8.6 will no longer work, and if 8.6 is currently working fine for you, then you should seriously consider just leaving it alone and sticking with 8.6 until you're truly forced off of it.

 

[slobis]

Use NTBackup to backup your Exchange Information Stores and commit the logs. This will reduce the size of the log directories to almost nothing.
You can then delete the .bk files that NTbackup creates and you're done.

You have to put the logs back in their original locations or Exchange will become corrupt.

I am currently in the process of upgrading 150 Exchange servers from 8.5 to 9.1. A couple things to consider:

- A silent upgrade is pretty much out of the question. You'll have to enter service account information and also serial numbers. This can be done via command line, but I have found that unreliable at best.

- Jobs and catalogs have been converted pretty much flawlessly everytime. I do second the notion that you let BENT backup the old information before upgrading because on the servers that failed to upgrades jobs/catalogs, restoring that information from tape was a major pain.

- BENT 8.x will backup from 9.1 agents. But BENT 9.1 will NOT backup from 8.x agents. You should either upgrade both server and agents at the same time or upgrade the agents in advance of upgrading the server.


Those are my thoughts, I have recently become an expert in BENT upgrades and I am happy to answer any questions you guys have...

 

[SuperNoob]

Thanks all for the reply,
(Forgive me for my bad English.)

I tried for a couple off weeks to install veritas 9.1, but till now now succes. I have an intence mail communication with someonde at from the Veritas support helpdesk. But no succes.
The problem is that I cannot install MSDE, whatever I do; silent install, other user, new Mdac version etc etc.
The installation bar goes fine to nearly 100%, but at 99,99% it get a rollback and were back at square 1.
And the last mail that was written to me, they suggest to uninstall Vertitas 8.6 and manually delete regkeys. And then to do an fresh install off Veritas 9.1.
I told them I think the problem lies in the MSDE part someone else from Vertitas confirmed this.
I tried several times to use the standard backup in W2K but no result. The full backup took to long. The LTO that we used is not recognized, so I must backup it on USB external harddisk. Thats the reason why the backup takes 14 to 20 hours.
The problem is getting bigger and bigger. I try to abroad the problem to move the logfiles to the external disk.

Before I go ferther I want to extract an mirror from the C: drive. Norton ghost is no option because, the system runs with an IBM serveraid 5i and Norton ghost 2003 does not recognice this device.
There are 2 players I found: Symantec V2i Protector® Server Edition and Acronis True Image Server 7.0.
Veritas 9.1 disaster recovery is out of the question.
Personally I feel for Acronis.
Oke this is why I decide to make this decision.

1. To make an mirror on an standard ide-drive because with an disaster I can plug it in on an any computer with server proberty.

2. When an good mirror is made I can do more thing to get Veritas installed.

3. And an second backup unit/device.

4. There is an SCSI IBM serverraid device installed and on this server. We use 4 of the 5 disk and I want to use the hotspare disk. I want to merge this drive with the excisting c: drive so the C partition can so be expanded with 16 GB.

Thanks in advance.

 

[SuperNetMan]

If 8.6 is working for you, don't upgrade. Stay at 8.6 until you're forced off of it, then switch to another brand of backup software.

8.6 was the best Backup Exec they made. It worked great for us. I wish they'd just simply added support for Windows 2003 to the 8.6 product. BEWS 9.0 was a complete re-write and they broke a lot of things, and took away some valuable features and functionality that we depended on. It also made me have to re-create all my job and selection definitions because the upgrade of 9.0 over 8.6 corrupted them all and I was forced to manually remove 8.6 and install 9.0 from scratch. Version 9.1 broke even more things and has proven to be even more unreliable than 9.0 for us. This product has gone downhill so quickly that we're having to budget for completely replacing it with another brand of backup software because it is now become completely unreliable for our multi-server backups over a network.

 

[SuperNoob]

SuperNetMan,

Thanks for the reply.
And yes I was very disapointed when after 2 weeks I cannot get a proper install. My problem is with Veritas 8.6 exchange agent we bought Veritas 8.6 without knowledge about the agents that must be installed.
After a while we decide to buy an exchange agent for Veritas 8.6.
But this was not possible any more because version 9.0 is the only version that you can buy.
And an upgrade is very expensive. So we waited and searched for the right version.
Then we decide a couple of weeks ago to buy a 9.1 version.
Frankly I want to keep the excisting version but we don't have an licente key for the exchange agent 8.6.

First I make a good mirror and after this we decide how to work on the Veritas part and I will remember your experience with 9.1.

Thanks,