Forum Discussion

CCWW's avatar
CCWW
Level 4
4 years ago

virtual machines without the backup exec agent complete the backup with the following warning

Don't recall which version of BE this started in but I'd guess it was the 20.x or 21.x version when instant GRT was enabled.  Currently running 21.4

Backup jobs of virtual machines (vSphere ESXi) complete with the following warning:

Directory 'C\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\EventCache.v2' does not support Granular Recovery Technology (GRT). Granular restores cannot be performed for items in this directory.

Could I just globally exclude this folder since it's not something that we would ever need GRT for. I don't want to turn off GRT completely as we want to be able to recover at the file level if needed.

 

 

21
Windows Server 2012 R2

3 Replies

  • Gurvinder's avatar
    Gurvinder
    Moderator
    4 years ago

    That is the windows update folder where you get the exception. Adding an exclusion may not help in this case as the folder gets backed up as part of the VM backup but the exception is seen in the GRT phase when we look at the content of the disk.

    Is it possible to clear the software distribution folder and try the backup. Later windows update should re-download the files that it needs. The exception means that we could not open this folder to create the list of content ( could be some error while accessing the content of that folder C\Windows\SoftwareDistribution\EventCache.v2 ) . Have you tried to check the content of that folder by connecting to that VM and are you able to view the contents of EventCache.v2 folder.

    • CCWW's avatar
      CCWW
      Level 4
      4 years ago

      I signed in with the logon account (used for backups) and another account and both accounts are able to open and read the files in that folder. Looking at the past warnings it open happens if there are any files in the folder. On servers where the folder is empty we don't get the alert but if there's any files in that folder we do. Putting the agent on seems to resolve the issue but since we're just doing VM level backups we'd prefer to not have to manage software agents across all the servers.

      • Gurvinder's avatar
        Gurvinder
        Moderator
        4 years ago

        Putting the agent on means you already have the agent but in stopped state or no agent is installed and when you install it and then run the VM backup, there are no exceptions seen ?
        Is it possible to clear that folder C\Windows\SoftwareDistribution and then try as the others dont show the exception that way.