TeraStation TS-RIGL/R5 F/W 1.01 Backup issues

[LSIADMIN2]

   

Installed this NAS unit to backup to disk via Symantec Backup Exec. This is the 2nd unit, as the first 1 had horrible thruput, Buffalo Tech. support said it must have bad Nic. so i returned and got this 1. Have had problems with thruput speed and backup failing since install, although the speed is a not as bad as previous unit. I still can only get like  400mb/min. setup with direct connect on backup/exchange/file server server via cable that came with unit. Symantec says they do not support backing up Exchange to NAS unit on network. this is dumb imo, as this NAS looks like another drive to the OS. It looks like the backup is successful, but then failing the verify step. Then when writing to tape, the backup fails 100% of the time. The error is: e00084c8 - The backup storage device has failed.

 

2 questions.

1. is this thruput speed of 350-400mb/min the best i can hope for? and

2. need help getting this backup to complete successfully.

 

Please help. TIA,, Bill

[LSIADMIN2]

   #bump#

[LSIADMIN2]

   Bump again.

[Colin137]

Please do not bump messages. Our support team checks through the previous posts daily to ensure that all threads are answered in a timely fashion.

 

That being said, on to the issue at hand. ~6.5 MB/s is a pretty good transfer rate assuming that you're on a 100 Mbps network. Exchange cannot be backed up to NAS drives because of the way database files are handled by Exchange.

[LSIADMIN2]

   

Thanks for your reply. I am on a gig network, sorry for not making that clear. Well the NAS is directly connected to Intel Pro 1000 MT NIC. It says it is all synched up at 1000mb full. A collegue said to update the iscsi initiator driver. I have decided to run the exchange information store Backup directly to tape while this backup is running and it still fails. same error, same poor thruput. As this is broke i am using a USB 2.0 500gig external drive and get about 430mb/min thruput. shouldn't iscsi be much faster? What do you suggest we do moving forward?

 

TIA,  Bill

[Colin137]

Whoops it seems i missed the "I" in the model number, i didn't realize you were using the iSCSI unit. Once you hook up the iSCSI Initiator to the unit, go to Disk Management ( Run-> diskmgmt.msc ), find the drive and format it to NTFS. That should at least fix the Exchange issues, assuming the problem is with the Terastation, not the backup software.

 

The speed is something different entirely. Is the box that connects to the Terastation connected with gigabit as well?

Message Edited by Colin137 on 01-13-2009 02:55 PM

[LSIADMIN2]

   

The Terastation is already all formatted NTFS, its the Y: drive, with a shared folder for the backup to disk task. I gave the backup exec user account full access. DOne all that.

 

Like i said i scheduled the exchange information store to backup directly to tape, this works fine, runs while the rest of the backup tasks run, which currently is backing up to an 500gb USB external drive. Although, the last time i tried using the the Terastation, the job still fails with the same error, even tho i am not backing up the exchange information store to the Terastation..

 

The Terastation is connected to the server via the ethernet cable it came with on a Intel PRO 1000 MT NIC. this is onboard nic1, server is connected to LAN via Intel PRO 1000 MT nic2. This is irrelevant tho, as the backup exec server is the same physical server as the exchange server and file server. So we are not going over the network, if we were i would not have the Terastation connected to a server, i would just connect it to the LAN.

 

So what can we do to get better thruput ad to get successful backups?

[LSIADMIN2]

   

Hi,

 

Well u said not to bump messages, but i have not heard from you in 6 days. That is hardly checking posts in a timely fashion where i come from. Kindly give some guidance on this issue.

[Colin137]

Please accept my sincere apologies. The fact that you get similar speeds to a USB disk seem to indicate that the backup is bottlenecking in software or on your computer, since you should be getting faster speeds with both the USB disk and the Terastation. Still, it may be worthwhile to try a standard Cat 5e cable.

 

The Terastation iSCSI is not on Symantec's compatibility list for Backup Exec 10d (10.1). See

ftp://exftpp.symantec.com/pub/support/products/Backup_Exec_for_WindowsNT/281670.pdf

 

What version of Backup Exec are you using? Have you checked with Symantec on this issue?

[lsiadmin]

   I just upgraded to backup exec 12.5. Honestly, it seems to be working OK going to the USB drive. Thus i think i may attach the Terrastation to another dell server that i am going to install vmware ESX server on. will i be able to put virtual machines on the terrastation? will vmware be all happy? TIA

[Colin137]

Let me check on that. You may have to use the iSCSI initiator in VMWare, but I'm not sure. There's no reason i can think of that it wouldn't work.

[lsiadmin]

   Thanks, i look forward to your reply. Have a great day!