For several days I was perplexed by an Avamar backup job that continually failed.  The backup source was a simple Windows application server which was running perfectly with no noticeable faults.  The Avamar server was lending little help in finding the solution either.  The message “…backup failed with exit code 10019: Externally cancelled by Administrator ” were all of the clues I had to find a solution.  I knew for a fact that no “administrator” had cancelled the job, so that left me puzzled.  In fact, it wasn’t until I opened the Avamar client work order log on the Windows server that I began to unravel the mystery.

Within the work order log contained a status code, 30900, and a more specific error number 10013.  After a few minutes of research, I was able to determine that the job was “cancelled” due to it not completing before the backup window expired.  I went back and checked the time in which the job started, and sure enough, the job started just before the end of the backup windows.  A quick modification to the window, and the job is now completing successfully.

Let the eGroup backup and recovery therapists show you the latest in data protection methods that will get you back in the game!

Join eGroup Technical Consultants and EMC Specialists throughout the Carolinas for our multi-city Backup and Recovery Solutions “hands-on” demonstration and learn how eGroup and EMC’s Solutions can empower unbelievable levels of data protection, streamline backup and recovery operations, and enable wide range of service levels – even for the largest data sets. Score a touchdown with stress free IT.

eGroup’s award-winning hands-on eBlock equipment rack will be on-site at each venue, offering customers the opportunity to directly experience the newly released power of EMC Avamar v6.0 integrated with DataDomain 670 platforms – satisfying a variety of use cases – from densely virtualized environments, to classic tier-1 application and data protection, even desktop/laptop use cases in a traditional or VDI environment! The on-site platform also includes Cisco UCS Servers, EMC Isilon, EMC VNX 5500 Unified Storage, Cisco Nexus 5000 10GbE unified fabric switches, and VMware View 5!

Each event includes lunch and giveaways!  Click on a city below for more information and registration!

11.14 RALEIGH, NC

11.15 CHARLOTTE, NC

11.17 COLUMBIA, SC

11.18 CHARLESTON, SC

Questions? e-mail Liz Wilmes or call 1-877-eGROUP-1.

EMC Avamar is magical– and if you don’t believe me, read this first. To understand how the dedupe magic works in an EMC Avamar solution, it’s helpful to first understand the methods of data deduplication commonly found today. Below is a brief explanation of the top 3.

File-level (the most common)

- File level identifies duplicate files within a volume, and commonly uses a hashing technique to take the file name, size, last modified date, and other similar metadata information to make a unique hash/fingerprint for that file. If two copies of this exist, and a user opens and changes a single letter or adds a period to it, the hash becomes unique, and this file will not be de-duplicated.

This is what you’d find on an EMC Celerra or VNX CIFS share. This is good for environments with lots of file server type data and users that tend to share data between them. Our customers seem to be in the 20-25% space savings range using this technology on their VNX / Celerra CIFS shares, but your mileage may vary.

Fixed Block Level (also called fixed length)

- Common in snapshot/replication technologies, it breaks a file into a fixed number of bits, and if they’re the same, that segment is de-duplicated. If you have two files that break down into the following bits, the RED sections would be de-duplicated based on a 4-bit block length.

1111 1111 0001 / 1111 1110 0000

This will usually have a higher deduplication perecentage than File level, as files of different types that have identical segments (sub-file level) will still see some level of deduplication. But this isn’t the best solution, and “fixed” itself is an antonym for flexible, which is what we all want our technology to be.

Variable block level (what Avamar uses)

- This uses an intelligent method to determine segment size based on the data itself to determine length size. It provides much greater granularity in finding duplicate data

Avamar’s intelligence allows it to look at a file, read the header and say “this is an X type of file, so I’m going to break it into these variable segments”. This provides the greatest level of deduplication. So with that foundation, we’ll move into more details as to the process Avamar uses to dedupe at the source, and also globally across all clients.

THE PROCESS

Note: Most of the following process happens on the CLIENT itself, which is where “source dedupe” happens. Keep this in mind when reading through this post and watching the video at the bottom. The benefit of this are faster backups, and substantially less consumption of bandwidth, which is ideal in environments that have smaller WAN pipes between offices or backups that run past their backup windows.

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