Arcserve 2000 Compression

[Paulusdu]

Hi

I've a few questions about compression on Arcserve. We backup our Domino Server using Arceserve 2000 onto DDS 4 20/40 tapes. We use these tapes on different servers and can backup 29GB's on one. The problem is that on our Domino server i can only get it to backup 19.5GB's.

I've checked compression and have tried different setting, enabling hardware, enabling software and trying both, but i still can't get past 19.5GB's.

Is there any issue with Domino mail files (.nsf) that they cannot be compressed properly ?. I've heard of this with other types of files but i'm wondering could this be my problem.

ANy help would be very much appreciated.

Paul

 

[davidmichel]

Is that 19.5gb of data backed up or 19.5gb of data written to tape?

It should always at least write 20gb to tape since that is the native capacity of the tapes.

I have no prior history with the Domino files so can't say what you should expect. It might be helpful to compare that to regular data backed up from the same system to help confirm it is only when backing up that specific data.

I'm assuming that the stupid things have already been checked like:
Special tapes just for this backup
that just happen to be DDS3
that are older and so may have blocks marked as bad
that have been used in non-compressed mode (faq478-4399)

 

[Paulusdu]

Hi David

It's 19.6 GB written to tape. It looks like it stops as soon as it get to a rather large mail file (1.2GB). The tapes are definatly DDS4 20/40. I've tried a few brand new tapes also , which rules out the bad block theory.

So i'm still sort of stumped.

Cheers for the reply though !

Paul

 

[davidmichel]

The backup stops?
or
Writting data to the first tape stops?
It should write a continuation block on the fist tape and then continue on to the next. The file would therefore be on both tapes.

Because of the span, perhaps all the data is being reported to have been written to the second tape and so the first tape is reported to have 19.6 when in reality it has more. A possible test would be to modify the job or split it up so that the span will take place on a smaller file.

 

[Paulusdu]

It stops writing to the first tape, and looks for a second tape. The actual data backed up is 19.6GB in real disk size. So its not compressing anything. I'm going to try backing up the same data from a different server to see if it could possibly be a problem with the physical DAT drive on the server.
While i'm doing this i'm goingto try to backup over 20GB of non mail files on the server i'm having problems with.
Not sure if either test will solve my problem but, it will point me in the right direction.
Any other ideas would be appreciated.

Paul

 

[davidmichel]

The tests will help. Also if you have not tried it, let the job span and complete. The default for the job is no time out so it will just sit there until you come in and load a blank tape. Letting the job finish might also be helpful it tracking down the source of this.

 

[jcsanchez]

I had the same problem. No compression. I had the problem backing up normal files. I just can tell you that I read in this forum that with this patch level it works.

- SP4 + parches QO29368, QO22113 + QO41394
- SP4 + parches QO29368, QO22113, QO27941 (if you have Oracle Agent installed do not apply this patch) + QO41394

Good luck.

 

[jcsanchez]

It worked for me.