Monitor Symantec Backup Exec

The N-able N-central monitoring services provide a summary of the Backup Exec data backup status for up to 50 jobs on a device. The N-able N-central backup status page enables you to see the current state of the backup and disk space status and other data transfer information. Monitoring the backup status enables you to be aware of any issues that a technician can resolve quickly, and ensure the customer's data is secure in a backup location. If a backup job fails, a technician is notified and provided with data to help resolve the issue.

Monitoring of a Backup Exec jobs is dependent on the probe or agent having permissions to access the Backup Exec job SQL or SQL Express database. N-able N-central contains a VB script that will ready the Backup Exec SQL database for access by the Windows Probe. After readying the Backup Exec database for access, the Windows probe or Windows agent initiate a Backup Exec Discovery Task. The Backup Exec Discovery task determines the listening port for the SQL database and passes credentials to retrieve all configured backup jobs available for monitoring.

The Backup Exec service requires Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC), version 2.8 or greater is installed and configured. The MDAC contains the ODBC driver manager and MS SQL ODBC driver required to connect to the Backup Exec MS SQL database.

  1. Click Views > All Devices and select the device running Backup Exec.
  2. Click the Settings tab, select Monitoring Options.
  3. In the Backup Exec section click the Backup Exec Enabled check box and enter the appropriate credentials.
  4. Click Save.
  5. Click Refresh Now to tell the Agent or Probe to discover the backup jobs on the device.
  6. Click the Monitoring tab, select Status and click Add.
  7. Next to Backup Exec, enter 1 in the Instances text box, and click Apply.
  8. Click Backup Exec in the Services list to display a list of all discovered Backup Exec jobs available for monitoring.
  9. Select the check box next to each Backup Exec Monitoring job you would like to monitor.
  10. Click Add Jobs.

    11. If a new Backup Exec job has been configured that requires N-able N-central monitoring, rerun the Backup Exec Job Discovery.

When viewing the device you can review the backup status.

The Backup Exec service is configured to monitor backups that occur once a day. If backups occur every few days, or once a week, re-configure the Backup Exec service to scan only once a new backup has been run. Otherwise the Backup Exec service will report a Failed state because Job Timeout value of 24 hours will be exceeded.

To re-configure the monitoring schedule of the Backup Exec service, click the Service Details tab, and select the appropriate schedule from the Scanning section.

N-able recommends you have the Backup Exec service scan approximately one hour after the backup usually finishes. This ensures the Backup Exec service will not scan while the backup is still running, even if the backup runs a little longer than usual.