Symantec Backup Exec Speed issues

Symantec Backup Exec Fun

Backup Exec is a great application, my personal favorite. Recently I had issues with a backup, as you can see in one of my previous posts… the backup works fine, although compression will not turn on. It is known by most Backup Exec experts that Symantec Backup Exec enables compression when the job starts(if compression is configurable), but how do YOU know if Backup Exec is doing its job and possible the drive is to blame?

Well here is the answer, its called SGMON, its a debug tool that is used to view debugging information for Backup Exec components and services. SGMON is in “C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\SGMON.exe for Backup Exec 12.5d installations. Earlier revisions its buried in the Symantec Backup Exec folder, best bet is to just search for sgmon.exe and you’ll find it easy enough. 

Run SGMON, check off Job Engine; as below…

Click “Capture to File also. Leave SGMON running while you start a job, wait for the job to finish, next thing you need to do is locate the file. For Backup Exec 12d its located here; “C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Logs\servername-SGMON.log”

Do a search in the log file for compression, as below…

Once you are sure that Backup Exec is doing what it is supposed to do, and compression isn’t working as you can tell under the media tab. and the appropriate Media Set as shown below… MIND You when compression just isnt working you will see 1:1 instead of 2.3:1.

SGMON can be used for many things, you can find the official documentation here

Anyways, I’m off for now.

Any Questions you know what to do!

NS

HP Dat 72 USB Internal Tape Drive

I had a tape drive at a client slowly die, I was running Symantec Backup Exec 12d. I spent an hour or so troubleshooting and ended up calling HP tech support and they decided to replace the tape drive, soon after, the replacement tape drive died…. it was in there for about one week. I tried everything. I was using HP Tape Tools for Windows. I updated the firmware for the tape drive and this didn’t help. I updated the drivers and it didn’t help. Diagnostics was pointing to the tape drive needing a cleaning(this was after many diagnostic runs), although the drive is a week old. I didn’t believe HP when they said we needed a cleaning tape. Why would a tape drive work, but slowly? it was much faster with compression, but always would come back with a CRC error. In the end, I ordered two cleaning tapes, a few days later, I went onsite and ran the cleaning tape… to my surprise this seemed to fix the issue…. my question to HP is, “Why wasn’t this drive quality tested?” Another question is, “Why doesn’t a drive that requires cleaning monthly, ship with a cleaning tape?!!?”

Half ranting, half informative… If I save just one person hours of troubleshooting, then my job is done…

NS