I had a client with two brand new Dell servers running Windows 2003 Server with Symantec Backup Exec 12.5 installed. The first server was a Domain Controller, while the other was a member server with Exchange 2003. When I would start the backups, they would move at a decent throughput, but a few minutes later, the job rate would get slower and slower, and eventually just get stuck at some pathetic speed, hoping to just die. This was happening on both servers. The same thing would happen when I would run Microsoft Windows NT backup as well. Then, I remembered both servers were running Symantec Endpoint (I hate any antivirus software from Symantec, by the way) and decided to disable it. Still, no luck. Finally, I uninstalled Symantec Endpoint and rebooted. Guess what? Backup Exec was flying. Check your antivirus software and make sure it’s not the culprit. Don’t just disable it, un-install it to test it out. I haven’t experienced this with any other antivirus vendor, though.
I can’t begin to tell you how much I hate all of Symantec’s antivirus products. They are all garbage. Don’t believe any of the online reviews; most of those people have no real world experience. I can’t believe the number of times I have tried to uninstall their products and ended up with a blue screen. You know the products sucks when they have to create a standalone uninstaller for everything they make. The only reason why Backup Exec is good is because it originally came from Veritas. Hopefully, they don’t screw it up. There really aren’t too many good backup options out there.
Update:
Symantec apparently has a maintenance release for this issue. Too late, I already un-installed the software. Oh well.
Sadly I fear its too late. One of the “known” problems with BackUp Exec 12.5 and the GRT for Exchange is the software only displays 32 mailboxes when attempting a restore. Imagine that!
The hotfix was finally released today; which caused the server to bluescreen. Once an uninstall and a reinstall from the website, not Live Update was done, the system no longer blue screened BUT any backups done before the patch was applied still display only 32 mailboxes. This has caused our IT team to be 120 hours behind an SLA for a customer. Symantec support offers no help.
We are now looking at EMC Networker and CommVault. Once Backup Exec is gone from our network, we will have eradi cated all Symantec products (ghost, AntiVirus and Backups). This company provides really crap solutions and really crap support.
Well, it looks like Symantec is starting to kill what used to be a good product. Thanks for making us aware of the Exchange GRT bug; I had no idea. I’ll have to go around all our clients and make sure that update it applied. Unbelievable. I do not have experience with EMC Networker or CommVault. If anyone does, please leave a comment. I would love to hear about it.
Thanks.
yea, that happened to me also. One part of the Hotfix states that you have to redeploy the remote agent to your servers. Don’t forget to redeploy the remote agent and restart the Exchange servers in question. I have not done that yet, but I’m hoping it corrects the 32 Mailbox Restore Display issue.