Server 2000, dynamic disks, and MS Virtual server

[todd1561]

A few questions:

1. I have a Windows 2000 server and when I try to perform a backup I cannot get past the "Backup options" page. I cannot select a snapshot provider and the "Next" button is grayed out. What is your support of Windows 2000?

2. I have a Windows 2003 server with a dynamic disk on hardware RAID 5. When I try to backup this drive it takes far too long, in the range of an entire day to backup a drive with 160GB of data. I have other similar servers that have standard partitions and these backup in a couple hours. Why does it take so long to back up a dynamic disk and is there anything I can do?

3. If I backup a Windows Virtual server host machine, can I assume the virtual machines held on it will be backed up as well, since their VHD files are stored on the server that is being backed up?

Thanks,
Todd

[Alt]

1. Start R-Drive Image in the debug mode ("R-DriveImage.exe -debug") and close it. There will be a file rdi_<date>_<time>.log Contact the technical support with it and provide the reference to this topic.
2. We are trying to figure the problem out.
3. Yes, I believe so, although I would make a test to be sure.

[Todd1561]

Thanks for the reply. As for #1, I was able to get the R-Drive snapshot provider to show up after rebooting the server. However, I find that when I run a job on this Win2k Server is fails a couple minutes in (after having written a couple gigs to the image file) saying it "could not commit".

Thanks,
Todd

[Alt]

Can that be that the target disk becomes temporally unavailable?

[todd1561]

I guess it could be, but I've run it several times with the same result. I'm also backing up 6 other servers to the same drive (not at the same time) without issue.

Todd

[Alt]

About Issue 2. Can you change the snapshot provider on the Backup Options panel and see the how that affect the backup speed?

[todd1561]

This is Windows 2000 Server, which is pre-VSS, so no.

Todd

[Alt]

But in Issue 2 you wrote that was Server 2003.

[todd1561]

Oh, woops, misread your question. All of my servers other than the one Windows 2000 server are Windows 2003, so I use the VSS snapshot provider on them. I'll try using the R-Drive provider on the one with dynamic disks are report back.

Thanks,
Todd

[Todd1561]

If anything it took a little longer, 8 hours to backup 160 GBs using the R-Drive snapshot provider. This backup is saving to a SATA hard drive on another server over a gigabit network. Both servers are on the same Cisco 3550-12T gigabit switch with their NIC and switch interfaces manually set to 1000 Mbit, full duplex. I have other servers backing up similar amounts of data in the same fashion, saving to the same server, which take considerably less. The only difference is the dynamic disk.

Todd