Here is a reminder to go through your backups and verify that the start time is still correct. On the older versions of Backup Exec I’ve found that they sometimes don’t do the time change for daylight savings properly.  This has changed with 12+ and I’ve not had any issues with the newer versions of Backup Exec, but as we all know it isn’t always an option with your client or your current budget.  Also I’ve seen it not have issues, but most of the time I do find out that it has changed.  It also depends on when your backup is scheduled to run as to how much it affects you, but I’ll assume that you have it scheduled at that time for some specific reason.

From what I have been able to figure out the cause of this is that Backup Exec uses UMT and the time zone difference to figure out when your backup runs.  Windows then adjusts the time zone difference +/- 1 hour as needed for the Daylight Savings Time change.   This means for people like us in the Central time Zone that the change is UMT – 6 hrs or UMT – 5 hours.

This simple change not replicated through properly on the old versions of Backup Exec can have a huge effect on the backups.  If it isn’t properly updated then instead of the backups starting at 11 PM, they are now starting at 12AM that morning (day doesn’t change). This can get you off of the tape labels if you have the backups going to tapes labeled the days of the week and miss the first backup job on Monday since it started at midnight and 99% of the time for our clients no one was there over the weekend to swap out the tape from Friday’s backup.