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I just wanted to put my experience out there for all to see. Especially (I have been told as have no experience of previous version) with the latest version 6.3.

It’s been a bumpy week and continues to be so. I’m not flaming here just putting down what has happened.

So we get our spanking new 712 - Update to the latest version

Problem no.1 http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/244183-your-unitrends-support-service-contract-does-not-support-this-action?page=1#entry-1499336

Ok that’s resolved in 36 hours. So we start with a very simple configuration.

The first thing that I notice is that there is no ‘include’ when creating a backup so on my file server I have to ‘exclude’ every single folder except the one I want. I find this odd.

To compound this issue the exclude does not work (another bug confirmed by unitrends) and it continued to try to backup 3.5 TB even though I only asked it to do 300GB. Then asks me to upgrade to a new box!

Then because of another bug (confirmed by Unitrends) If a master backup occurs at say 1am, but then an incremental or differential is scheduled before the master finishes, then the master backup is ‘triggered’ to start again. (and again and again)
In my case – Exchange was stuck in a permanent backup – even when it was terminated. This caused the exchange server to grind to a halt.

I’m just so surprised that these bugs were not picked up before release?

To be fair unitrends have spent considerable time trying to fix the issues remotely (fixes by the end of the week I hear) and Carl from CD-DataHouse Limited deserves a mention who I bought the solution from has been nothing more than tireless in trying to solve the issues.

Is it just me>?

10 Spice ups
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Hello,

My name is Mark Croson and I am the V.P. of Unitrends Customer Support. I want to respond back to your issues. We take customer support here at Unitrends very seriously and I personally will take responsibility for your issues and have them resolved to your satisfaction. I will have one of my engineers contact you within the next hour to help resolve your questions. Please feel free to contact me at 803-744-9136

Best Regards,

Mark Croson

V.P. of Customer Support

Unitrends.

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Stonefish - Thanks for the update on your situation from the other day!

In order to address your issues, can you private message me your name & business name so we can do some background work into your installation, etc?

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Thanks for the responses. I don’t have a problem with the Unitrends support, they have worked hard on resolving the issues.

I’m guess I’m just letting people know that they should hold fire upgrading to the latest version as I don’t want them to go through the same stress.

It may be that as this is a new box and as such had no previous configuration that the issues on an existing (already configured) 6.2-6.3 upgrade may not transpire.

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Sounds like you need a special bug badge!! That sucks that you have had such a hard time of it, it definitely is not indicative of the ‘normal’ experience for sure!! Please let us know how it goes & if there is anything else the community can do to help.

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Stonefish: Here’s why Mark Croson was contacting you. There are some things in your note that don’t make sense to us - not that you’re wrong at all, we’re just having trouble understanding. I walked down to support to talk to Mark - neither of us understood - and Joe Balazs (the person who is responsible for enginering, support, and manufacturing) didn’t undersand either. The support engineer you were working with is out sick, as well as his manager (terrible timing, huh?), and we’re mobilizing a bunch of resource to try to understand the situation. The “bugs” that were confirmed to you aren’t completely understood - and in particular those being related to 6.3 in some fashion - so Mark is leading an effort to do just that. We want to get nailed ASAP!!!

Thanks for writing.

Mark Campbell

Chief Strategy/Technology Officer, Unitrends [803.351.1037] E-Mail: Campbell@Unitrends.com

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Also, the include/exclude list thing has been mentioned many-a-times, once you get used to setting up the exclusion lists it becomes a lot easier, its just a small ‘pain’ in what is (for most) a near painless backup system.

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Jaguar wrote:

Also, the include/exclude list thing has been mentioned many-a-times, once you get used to setting up the exclusion lists it becomes a lot easier, its just a small ‘pain’ in what is (for most) a near painless backup system.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, this methodology is in place to prevent against any user forgetting to back something up. Rather than have to select what you want to backup, you select what you want to exclude. It may seem tedious, but you can set global exclusion lists (say for all MP3 files) to make the process easier.

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If the exclusion and inclusion list overlap, what takes precedence?

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skri11a,

Good question! I had to ask people smarter than me on this one :slight_smile:

“Exclusions get applied to the included items, and if the included and excluded items are the same, nothing gets backed up.”

Make sense?

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Everything is included unless you exclude it, so the exclusion list takes precedence.

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Well there goes that idea. :wink:

Thanks for the info!

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Katie (Unitrends) wrote:

Everything is included unless you exclude it, so the exclusion list takes precedence.

When the exclusions are working…! :wink:

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It stinks that you’ve been having an issue with the exclusions, but what would be worse:

  • backing everything up until you get it sorted out
  • not backing your critical data up & finding out too late, like when the auditors are at your business?
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would like to clarify how exclusions work. when one creates a schedule (like a master) you have the option to create an exclusion list which will be tied to that named schedule. every time that schedule is run it uses that exclusion list. it is possible to create another schedule for the same client with a different exclusion list. each schedule from this client will run and create a master backup with its associated exclusion list.

in this case a schedule was created and started without using exclusions (i.e. backing up more than what was desired) and another schedule was created with exclusions.

from what i understand a valid good master backup with exclusions worked last night. right stonefish?

3 Spice ups
16

I’ll post up a proper update today when I have checked things out properly but in short there were some patches applied last Thursday and it does seem to be behaving itself since then.

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Stonefish wrote:

I’ll post up a proper update today when I have checked things out properly but in short there were some patches applied last Thursday and it does seem to be behaving itself since then.

Glad to hear that things are looking up. Please let us know how we can help.

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Stonefish: Any more updates?

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Unitrend’s have resolved the issues and have apologised for not releasing the software fixes soon enough.

They say that they have changed their internal processes so that the likely hood of it happening again is lessened.

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In making changes in release 6.3 for ease of use, that we made a mistake and had a defect in our software. That happens - not proud of it - and work pretty hard to avoid it - but we do have defects.

What made it much worse was that it was a one-line fix that our developers fixed in a few hours but due to some internal challenges and issues took 2 weeks to get out the door - no reason other than our own darned fault. Thus a few dozen customers were impacted. Completely our fault - we’ve changed those processes to get quick fixes out.

In fact, Jaguar, we’re using those new faster and more agile processes to get out one of the things you don’t like - the extra click in “Settings” (BernardW didn’t like as well for other reasons) will get released by end of this week or early next.

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