AOFO does not appear to be installed properly

[Becks]

Hi,

We are occasionally finding exceptions in the backup logs relating to "Unable to get minimum quiet time for physical volumes. Reduce the activity on these volumes, or wait and run the backup when there is less activity on the volumes."

I was wanting to lower the values relating to the minimum quiet time and no disk activity however the AOFO wizard keeps saying it isn't installed properly.

I understanding it can say this where the server OS or BE version is relatively new.

Does anyone know the paticular registry settings to change/add, I simply can't find them. It was easier to find in older versions of BE.

Perhaps it is somewhere else?

In one instance we have a Windows 2008 SBS with BE 12.5 sp4.

At another site we we have BE 12 sp5 on a W2K3 R2 - remote agents installed on several other W2K3 R2 servers. One of these remote agents often gives a message similar to above.

Thank-you.

[newsolutionBE]

Hi

Please check this

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH89771

[VJware]

This can help you diagnose further - http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH50133

[pkh]

I think you should investigate why the disks are busy before you start changing the values.  Normally, the default values are quite sufficient.  If the disks are genuinely busy, then you should look at re-scheduling the jobs.

As an aside, if you are doing your backups at night and is expecting little or no activity, then a busy disk could be a sign of virus/malware infection.

[CraigV]

Hi,

You don't need AOFO installed on Windows Server 2003 and above as it uses VSS instead. If AOFO is installed on those servers, remove it and try the backup again using the Automatic option for VSS under Tools --> Options.

Thanks!

[Becks]

Hi,

newsolutionBE: I've seen an article somewhere like this before but don't think it was as good. I've determined that there is not AV scans going on nor any other third party apps at that time of night. I am however beginning to suspect the drive where the AOFO cache is stored could be badly fragmented along with getting a little fuller than normal yet there is still a good amount of free space left. The advance open file option wizard works on the server where BE is installed however when selecting any of the servers with the RA installed it states that "the AOFO software does not appear to be installed correctly on ...." which is what I eluded to in my original post. Is there a way around this through the registry or something that needs to be run on the remote agents?

VJware: That link is good. I'll give it a try.

pkh: I'd changed the resource order last night but it still did it. I've changed it again for this evening to see if that helps.

CraigV: Hadn't thought of that. I thought you need AOFO installed in order to have that option you speak of. That being said, would this still work if you didn't have shadow copies turned on for each drive?

Cheers.

[pkh]

You might want to go to each remote server and uninstall the RAWS using Add/Remove Program.  Reboot the server and then push out the RAWS again to these servers.  This time for Server 2003 and above, do not select AOFO during the push-install.  You may need to re-boot the servers after the RAWS install.  This way you have a clean RAWS install without AOFO.  

AOFO is needed for older server OS's, like Windows 2000 because these do not have VSS and need the VSP to handle opened files.

In your jobs, you still need to select AOFO and set it to automatic.  Otherwise, you will have problems backing up opened files.

[CraigV]

AOFO is great for everything other than DB backups...when using it with DB backups, I'd suggest either turning it off or splitting the data and DB backups into 2 separate jobs.

[Becks]

VJware,

Did the performance coounters - showed a bit however will be doing again but also with disk queue lengths as well.

Cheers.

[Becks]

Ran again with the disk queues included however this showed nothing of concern.

Starting to really think less the 10% free space (still 18G+) and/or fragmentation are the main factors.

Thank-you all for your advice.