- Destination available free space
If your destination does not have sufficient free space, you may consider the following corrective actions:
- Reduce the number of saved recovery points
- Increase the available free space at the backup destination
- Change the backup destination to a larger capacity
- Reduce the size of the backup source (maybe eliminate unnecessary volumes from the backup)
- Increase the Compression setting of the backup
- Ensure that you have proper licensing
- When using CA ARCserve D2D On Demand to perform backups (especially for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server), it is important to verify that you have the proper licenses.
- CA ARCserve D2D On Demand uses all the VSS writers during backup to ensure consistent backups. The only exceptions are Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, and Hyper-V writers which are only included when they are properly licensed.
- Backup disk size
A volume is skipped from a backup if it is located on a disk larger than 2TB and an uncompressed backup format is used.
- Ensure that you are using a supported disk
Different types of disks are supported as CA ARCserve D2D On Demand backup source disks and destination disks.
For more information, see Disks Supported by CA ARCserve D2D On Demand.
- Selecting your backup frequency and retention count
If your scheduled backups are occurring more frequently than the amount of time it takes to generate a file system catalog for previous backup jobs, your recovery point retention count may be exceeded before the file system catalog being generated for the oldest session is completed. If this happens there may be no catalog generated for the backup sessions. To avoid this problem, you can either increase the schedule interval time for your incremental backups or increase the retention count.
- Backup destination folder manual operations
Manual operations (such as copy, cut, paste, or drag-and-drop) for the backup destination folder will not be successful if a job is active or a user is browsing recovery points using the ARCserve D2D View. Verify no active jobs are running or browsing of recovery points (using ARCserve D2D View) is being performed prior to attempting any of these manual operations.
- Proper drivers installed
Verify that you have latest drivers/firmware installed for all the devices.
- How changing the machine host name can affect saving your settings
When you enter a backup path, CA ARCserve D2D On Demand appends the host name to that path to use as the destination and this host name is also displayed in the settings dialog. When the name of the machine is changed, you must also change the destination path (backup, file copy, copy recovery point) by removing the old host name from the path before you attempt to save the settings.
For example: If your host name is "Host_A" and your backup destination is X:\ and you change your host name to "Host_B", any changes made to your backup settings will not be saved unless you first change the backup destination from x:\Host_A to x:\ again.
If you do not change the backup destination host name and attempt to save the settings, CA ARCserve D2D On Demand will think the backup destination "x:\Host_A" is already in use by Host_A and that Host_A is another machine and will not accept any changes to the settings.
- How changing your backup destination can affect saved recovery points
When you continue performing Incremental Backups to the changed destination and the specified number of saved recovery points is reached, CA ARCserve D2D On Demand merges the earliest backup sessions to the first destination to maintain the specified number of recovery points. As this merging process repeats, the number of recovery points saved to the first destination decreases, and at the same time the number of recovery points for the changed destination increases. Eventually, there are no recovery points for the first destination and all of the sessions are merged to the changed destination.
- How changing backup destinations can affect continued backups
If you configure and perform a Full Backup (and maybe some Incremental Backups) to a destination and then you decide to change your backups to a different destination, you can reconfigure your backup settings and continue performing Incremental Backups to the new destination without any problems.
If you later decide to change your backup destination again, you can simply reconfigure your backup settings again and continue performing Incremental Backups to the new destination without any problems.
For example:
- If you have a machine and it is configured to back up to Folder A on your local/remote volume, and after you perform a Full Backup and some Incremental backups, your destination is getting full and you want to change to a different destination (Folder B). You can reconfigure the backup settings to the Folder B destination and CA ARCserve D2D On Demand continues performing Incremental backups to that new destination. As a result, you have your Full Backup and some Incremental Backups on the original Folder A destination, and you have some Incremental Backups on the new Folder B destination.
- If after performing some Incremental Backups to Folder B, you decide to reconfigure to another new destination (Folder C), CA ARCserve D2D On Demand will continue performing Incremental Backups to the Folder C destination because the link to the original Full Backup location (Folder A) has been maintained.
If you configure and perform a Full Backup (and maybe some Incremental Backups) to a destination and then you decide to change your backups to a different destination, you can copy or move the contents from the original destination to the new destination, and then reconfigure your backup settings and continue performing Incremental Backups to the new destination without any problems.
However, if you have Full Backups in one location and Incremental Backups in a second location and then move the contents from the second location to a third location and attempt to continue performing Incremental Backups, then these backups fail because the link to the first location has been lost.
For example:
- If you have a machine and it is configured to back up to Folder A on your local/remote volume, and after you perform a Full Backup and some Incremental Backups, your destination is getting full and you want to change to a different destination (Folder B). You can move the contents of Folder A to Folder B and reconfigure the backup settings to the new Folder B destination. CA ARCserve D2D On Demand continues performing Incremental Backups to that new Folder B destination. As a result, you have your Full Backup and Incremental Backups all on the new Folder B destination.
- However, if your first destination is in Folder A (which now contains a Full Backup and some Incremental Backups) and you change the destination to Folder B using CA ARCserve D2D On Demand backup settings and continue to perform Incremental Backups, in this scenario, Folder B now only contains Incremental Backups. Then, if you move the contents from Folder B to another new destination in Folder C (moving only the Incremental Backups from Folder B without a Full Backup included), in this scenario, if you continue to perform Incremental Backups to Folder C, these Incremental Backups fails because the link to the original Full Backup location (Folder A) has been lost.
- Restrictions for a Microsoft SQL Server Backup
Due to Microsoft SQL Server VSS writer restrictions, some Microsoft SQL Server databases with a special status are automatically skipped and not backed up. These databases include:
- Database with 'Restoring' status. This status indicates that the database may be the log shipping secondary database, the mirror database, or the database waiting for more backed-up data to be restored.
- Database with 'Offline' status. This status indicates that the database is not available for general use.
- If your database is configured in one volume and the logs are configured in another volume and you select only one volume to back up, the Microsoft SQL application backup is skipped for that particular database.
- If you install Microsoft SQL Server after CA ARCserve D2D On Demand has been installed, and no backup has been performed yet, the Microsoft SQL Server may not be detected. As a result if you unselect a volume that has that application installed you may not get a warning notification that you are missing that application from the backup. This condition will be automatically remedied after you stop and start the D2D services or perform the next backup.
- Restrictions for a Microsoft Exchange Server Backup
- If your database is configured in one volume and the logs are configured in another volume and you select only one volume to back up, the Microsoft Exchange application backup will be skipped for that particular database.
- Any database in a dismounted state will be skipped from Microsoft Exchange application backup.
- If you install Microsoft Exchange after CA ARCserve D2D On Demand has been installed, and no backup has been performed yet, the Microsoft Exchange server may not be detected. As a result if you unselect a volume that has that application installed you may not get a warning notification that you are missing that application from the backup. This condition will be automatically remedied after you stop and start the D2D services or perform the next backup.
- Restrictions for VSS Writers
CA ARCserve D2D On Demand uses all the VSS writers during backup to ensure consistent backups. The only exceptions are Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange, and Hyper-V writers which are only included when they are properly licensed.
