Hi,

This solution should help you set up backups for network mounted file systems: https://solutions.emc.com/EMCSolutionView.asp?id=esg94189 --- "Backing up NFS and CIFS mounted file systems"

Regards

Adam

I'm still not able to backup any network drives. I've even moved to just trying to setup a basic network drive mapped from one Windows machine to another. Here's what I have setup so far:

Dataset - set for all windows file systems. explicitly added the network drive (as type windows file system) to the inclusions tab as "l:\test" without the "'s of course (I've also tried the straight UNC path "\\server\share" and it didn't work either). made sure under options to select local and network drives under what to traverse. I've even added a script to run (unchecked the quit backup if script fails) before the backup. It's a simple "net use l: \\server\share" batch file to double confirm the drive is there.

Group - Dataset is assigned to the group, there is no overriding dataset set. Default everything else.

Client side - I have created a new user "avamarbackup" with a password. Added avamarbackup to groups Administrator and Backup User (kind of redundant, I know). Logged in as the user and mapped the drive I wanted making sure to select "reconnect at logon" under the drive mapping. Then set the "Backup Agent" service to run as avamarbackup. Restarted the service and confirmed it shows as running as avamarbackup now.

When I initiate the backup from the server, it fails with a No Data error. If I add c:\test to the inclusions tab in the dataset, the job completes. So we know there's not a communication error between the server and the client. I'm able to restore the test data on the c: drive. Problem is I still don't get any data from the L: drive.

From the client pc I can browse out to the L: drive and make changes to files there, so it's not a permissions issue. On the client - if I select backup now - below the windows icon only the c: and d: drives show up. No network drives.

Possible issues:

- These two machines aren't joined to the same domain?
- I need to try adding the network drive as a different type of file system? I've tried SCO and Linux hoping when the article said there was no difference between Unix and Windows it meant we could just assign "inclusions" using different types and still have it work.
- The network drive should be defined somewhere else in the dataset other than inclusions?

There's got to be a straight forward way to do this - I'm sure I'm just missing one thing. Thanks!

Thanks for the extra details. Just one more thing, are you able to browse the mounted network drive via the Avamar Administrator GUI?

For example can you access l:\test by going through: Avamar Administrator GUI / Backup and Restore. Find the client, then attempt to browse it in the right hand pane, are you able to see l:\test?

The only drive that shows up is the c: drive from test. And that's only under restore. The browse functionality isn't available on this client for selecting backups as it's not on the same subnet.

Does the clients has access to restore??
I ask you this because if they dont have access to restore, why dont u just do the backup to the file server???

The original issue is that a client has a network drive mapped to a NAS with no OS. It's a cheap Netgear device - but that's beside the point. It's still just a network drive that we should be able to backup. That's why I setup this situation I have for testing.

I agree that installing the agent on the server would be the best way to do this. That's not an option at the end of the day. I'm logging into the Avamar client as myself and have admin rights. Still just need to find a working solution for backing up a network drive on a Windows File System.

Browsing is supported for NFS shares but not for CIFS.

With CIFS you can backup individual subdirectories but since you can't browse to it you would have to enter the subdirectory manually, using the snapup plugin field at the bottom of the Backup & Restore gui.

For example, specifically state the host and subdirectory as a UNC \\hostname\directory\subdirectory


I just did this now with my 'H' drive and it worked a treat.

Did you find any useful messages in the client workorder log as to why the backup is failing?

Here's what was going on (kudos to Chandran Sharath over at EMC for the help) -

You have to setup the UNC backups in their own dataset and groups. Also, you have to explicitly add the UNC path as a Microsoft File System type on the first tab of the Dataset setup. Make sure it's the only one listed in the summary window. No inclusions or exclusions needed. I believe you can only have one UNC path per group as well. That's what they get for having a cheap NAS device with no OS though.