Background

Customer is using Symantec Backup Exec 2010 Small Business Server Suite to perform daily data and Exchange backups. Backups are saved to two rotating NAS devices. One of them is kept off-site and devices are manually swapped every Friday.

Issue

User has to open Backup Exec and manually select which device is online, which offline every time while swapping NAS boxes. Ideally they would like just to swap devices without touching the server.

Devices are named BAK1 and BAK2. Let’s say BAK1 is plugged in and BAK2 if offline. When both devices in Backup Exec are marked as Online and Enabled everything is working fine. Backup Exec skips BAK2 (and marks it as offline) and backs up to BAK1. Problem occurs next week when customer swaps devices. BAK2 is marked as offline so Backup Exec doesn’t even try to use it. It tries to use BAK2, but now it’s offline, so Backup Exec marks BAK2 as offline and backup fails as there is no online devices as far as Backup Exec is concerned.

Solution

Create a .bat script which marks both devices as online and use scheduled tasks to run it just before Friday backup (after devices were swapped). As both devices are marked as online Backup Exec simply uses one which is actually online and skips the other one.

Script code:

echo DISABLE DRIVES
"C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\bemcmd.exe" -o79 -d"BAK1" -e0
"C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\bemcmd.exe" -o79 -d"BAK2" -e0
echo ENABLE DRIVES
"C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\bemcmd.exe" -o79 -d"BAK1" -e1
"C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\bemcmd.exe" -o79 -d"BAK2" -e1