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I know the spiceworks community is extremely pro-Unitrends, but I feel obliged to present the other side of the coin to those who are looking for a solution. I’ve had multiple problems with the system alread, including not being able to backup a system for 2 months because unitrends kept crashing the server. In the end I got tired of going through the same steps to fix the problem and I stopped trying when I was told I should contact microsoft to fix the issue. I ended up virtualizing the server and the backups go fine through the hypervisor. But that is not the problem I am having today…

Today I wake up to a backup failure on most of my servers. I immediately tell one of the techs to check the unitrends appliance. And, yes… the system is showing red lights on 3 of the disks. This is a huge concern as I understand the system has fault tolerance up to 2 disks and I wanted to make sure we did not have 3 disks failing. We contacted them at 8:30am and have gone through 2 techs already with the issue. It is 12:15pm and we are still going through hoops. Last tech saw the disks alerts and took our address, but told us he was going to elevate the problem because it is Raid 6 and 3 disks had alerts. So instead of sending the disks ASAP to ensure they get here ASAP… we are being bounced around. Do we really need to wait 4 hours to get this issue resolved? If you told me I was paying $200 for maintenance, I would expect to go through a lot of loops, but I am paying well above what replacing the whole system costs them. So why don’t they just send the disks and ask questions later?

Edit: I am told the tech called as I was typing this and the ticket got escalated again. Almost 1pm and still going through hoops. My concern is that the disk might not get sent on time in order to qualify for overnight shipping. Am I being too critical? Should I expect this kind of service?

To add salt to the wound, I am also concerned about the system error detection. I did not receive any warnings that there was an issue with the appliance until the backups failed. Shouldn’t a system like this send me an email detailing that the disks are showing faults so we can replace the disk before it fails? We didn’t get an e-mail about the disks before, during or after the failure even though we can still login just fine into the appliance and the backup logs are being sent.

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Sebastian - Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Can you please send me your asset tag or case number so that I can let the VP of support handle this for you?

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With that many drives failing all at once you should be getting a whole new appliance.

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And you can set up a unitrends dashboard app in Spiceworks to collect alerts. I thought it was 2 drive failure in a RAID 6

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Well, that is the thing. I still don’t have an answer if all the drives are failing or just one. At least we are expecting a callback within an hour, but yeah… it got escalated.

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I do have the dashboard setup, but that dashboard does not send alerts to my emails. I don’t constantly monitor the dashboard and it is filled with other alerts that I was told were normal by the tech that helped us install the appliance.

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Sebastian - I think that we should have someone look over your installation to make sure that your alerts are configured properly. Would you be interested in that?

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Hardware issues should come in your daily “System Status Reports” & in the “Management Status Report” if they are configured to be emailed to you every day. That is where I see any software updates or hardware failures I have had. I also have my Nagios monitoring them and receiving the SNMP traps which then emails me of any warnings.

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I will be configuring the traps to monitor with PRTG now that I saw that the email alerts aren’t getting to us.

Katie, yes I am interested in going over the alerts with a tech. We asked the tech for some assistance and he told us we should be getting the alerts if all 3 emails are filled (on the email alerts page). I had to go offsite after that call, so I don’t know if the tech onsite was able to modify any setting to get the emails working. It is odd though, all 3 alerts are using the same email and we are only getting backups status (detail and summary) and failures.

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Sebastian - Thanks for sending me your asset and cast numbers. I have contacted the VP of Support, and he is working to see who we can get on the phone with you soon to address your drive questions, and your alert questions. Please let me know how else I can help. Again, our apologies for this issue.

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I am offsite, but the tech that is attending the case tells me the hour is almost up and he has not received a call yet.

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Sebastian - Can you send me the tech’s name and phone number so that we can call the correct person? Since you posted, we assumed that you wanted a call back.

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Yay, seems like we were able to get the disks sent overnight. Thanks for the help!

Hopefully next time it won’t take us half a day to get to that point.

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Sebastian - Glad that they were able to get this taken care of. If you ever have a similar issue again, feel free to send me a direct message. I’m happy to help.

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What model are the failed drives?

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I feel that while replacing the bad drives in the unitrends RAID6 is a priority, perhaps a much higher priority should be backing up the Unitrends box (and any servers you currently have up) to an external hard drive. Get all data asap before things get worse!!. Use Windows backup or Robocopy (or, if you are seeing errors use unstoppable copier).

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I’m willing to bet they’re Seagate Desktop class drives.

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I know the Archive units used 3TB seagate drives. I don’t remember what the appliance itself uses… but probably the same. Not on-site to check.

Edit: Maybe I am wrong. Probably WD Black drives 4TB.

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What timing. I came into the office today because I had an alert on one of our appliances over the weekend. None of the indicator lights are on/blinking on one of the disks and can’t log in through the web browser because the database is offline. Support is sending me a new drive. /fingerscrossed

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Matt - I’m sorry to hear this (I think the gremlins are getting into everyone’s appliances after the holidays). It sounds like support has gotten you all squared away, but if you need something else, please let me know.