Forum Discussion

AllisonW's avatar
AllisonW
Level 4
10 years ago

Backup Exec job never stops running

I've recently installed BE 2014 on a Win 2012R2 server.  I tested the agent by running a backup on a single (separate) Windows server and it worked fine.  I decided to try backing up the entire physical box, which consists of a couple of VMs and of course the ESXi instance as well.  I did this by setting the backup job at the ESXI server level and letting it find the VMs in the datacentre, which it did.  All looked well, until the first time the job ran.

It ran until it got about 29GB in (it shows it's working on the VMDK of the first server), and then it just sits there.  It shows as active, and the program isn't frozen, but it makes no further progress.  I actually let it run for days and nothing.  I tried cancelling the job, and it shows as Active: Cancel Pending, and then never cancels.  :-(

If I restart the process or the server, it obviously stops the job, but as soon as it comes back up it just tries to start it over again from scratch.  A second attempt found it hanging at the same point (~29GB).  I again couldn't cancel.  I can't edit the job or remove the server, as the job shows as running.

The storage it's writing to is a NAS connected by iSCSI, and this is the only thing being written on it - it has TBs of room.  The individual server backup completed successfully to it in my tests, and was larger than 29GB, so it doesn't seem like it should be anything to do with the sroage media.

Any ideas on how I can troubleshoot this?  I'm obviously quite new to BE, so any advice is highly appreciated.

Agent for VMware Virtual Infrastructure
Backup and Recovery
Backup Exec
Not Applicable
  • AllisonW's avatar
    AllisonW
    10 years ago

    Okay - due to an unrelated issue, I moved one of the VMs from the datastore it was one to a different one.  And then suddenly all my tests are working!  So I was looking to make sure the backup storage had enough room (which it definitely did), but it was the VMWare storage.  I definitely think it should have some way of detecting that there's a resource issue and giving a useful message, rather than just hanging, though.  :-(

     

    Anyway, this appears to be resolved.  Thanks for helping me investigate, everyone!

  • lmosla's avatar
    lmosla
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Has this server been rebooted?  Reboot the server and then run Live Updates to make sure all the Updates are installed. Push out the remote agent to the remote servers and also if antivirus is running make exclusions in the AV program for the Backup Exec processes.

  • AllisonW's avatar
    AllisonW
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    The server has been rebooted, yes, and LiveUpdate shows that it's up to date.  There is not AV running on the server in question (access to it is quite limited).  Also, it's hanging on backing up the vmdk, so would there be something I'd have to do in ESXi, maybe?

  • VJware's avatar
    VJware
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Are you able to take a manual snapshot of this VM successfully via the VI client ? (Uncheck the first option of snapshotting the memory and check the second option of quiescing)

    Are there any relevant events logged in the event viewer of the VM itself and/or the virtual host ?

  • AllisonW's avatar
    AllisonW
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    A manual snapshot works through the client with the options you describe as well as the defaults.  In the VM's events tab, I just see instances (one for each time I let this job attempt to run) of "Virtual machine <name> disks consolidated successfully on <host> in cluster <cluster> in <datacentre>".  Also, the snapshot manager for the VM showed a snapshot labelled "Snapshot for full backup created by BackupExec on 18-02-2015 13:30".

    No other VMs on the host have either of these indicators that the backup job ever touched them, which is consistent with BE seeming to not progress past this first one.

    For the VM host, again I just see those disk consolidation comments for the first host, along with login info notices and such.  No flags.  :-(

  • VJware's avatar
    VJware
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Does a Remote Agent based backup of this particular VM complete successfully ?

  • AllisonW's avatar
    AllisonW
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    I don't know, since I can't get the original job to die.  It won't cancel, and I can't delete it because it's running.  When I reboot the BE server it just starts up again afterwards.  This makes it difficult to do any other tests involving the BE server...:-(

     

    Also, sorry for the delay in answering - I appear to have stopped receiving the reply notifications from this thread, even though I still show as subscribed.  Also odd.

  • VJware's avatar
    VJware
    Level 6
    10 years ago

    Try using BEMCLI to cancel the job. And instead of rebooting the server, try to restart all the BE services. The backup job should go in a Recovered State and you should be able to either delete it or place it on hold.

    If you are still unable to cancel / delete / edit the backup job, I would recommend to log a support case and have an engineer have a look @ your setup.

  • AllisonW's avatar
    AllisonW
    Level 4
    10 years ago

    Woo hoo...I got a notification this time!  Okay, I'll look into the BEMCLI commands (never used it before) and see what I can find.  I'll report back.  :-)

     

    Sadly, we can't log a support case - we are a charity and so have the NFR edition (I think?  whatever comes through Tech Soup) so we don't get support.