Application files ( services) not backuped on WIN2008 R2

[PIERRE_LOUIS]

While using Backup Exec for backup of Windows2008 R2 servers I observed the backup is skipping some files, WITHOUT any warning.

- Backup Exec ends the backup  as "Completed" without warning that it did NOT backup the selected files.

I observed it were most of all Application files ( .exe , of releted .dll )  which are defined to run as a SERVICE in the OS.

It occures  with all kinds of application files like : some examples :

 - own application files ( ex : microsoft dynamics Ax  : Axserv32.exe   ,    a    telnetd.exe   application,  etc )

-  applications from well known sources :  like : HP power manager , HP

-  windows system files :  ex:  c:\windows\system\*.*   contains  3   *.dll  and  3 *.drv     files  

                                      or :   C:\windows\system32\svchost.exe 

Even if you select these files in your file backup selection, backup-exec will not backup them, and will report finally the backup performed completely, without errors !  (  if no files at all were backuped, it will inform you the backup set was empty. )

Surprisingly, when performing a "Disaster restore"  on a bare server, I found all these files were nevertheless restored on the system. I presume these files will be included in the "System State" backup / restore. ( They will only be restored if you perform the IDR restore of ALL drives at the same time.Restoring you application drives later, will not restore your application files, unless you would restore the systemstate again .. )

But I don't think this is the desired behaviour  when performing only a backup of parts of the system. As a granular restore of the system state is not possible, I can't restore some of my application files in my own application folders.

Circumstances :

- I observed this problem only occures on WIN2008 R2,  not on WIN2008

- I observed this problems occurs with BE 2010 as well with BE 12.5 (using a remote agent from a WIN2003 server )

- I does NOT matter if the  *.exe application files are running or not. Even if the service is "DISABLED"  it will not be included in the backup ! 

   Copies of these  *.exe  will be backuped without problems.

- No matter if the  Backup exec server execution account  is the "local system account" or some "domain service account"

- No matter if the backup exec server is on the local server or on a remote server ( trough windows agent)

Could anyone explain the reason of this behaviour, or a way to backup my files anyway .

[Kiran_Bandi]

Refer the below:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH31848

Hope this helps.

Regards...

[Colin_Weaver]

As well as honoring the Windows File Exclusions (as provided by Kiran above)  we also will exclude any files that are registered to be protected as part of the System State - as such if the application is registered with the operating system as part of the systems state then we may be automatically excluding it as you should be running a System State backup instead of a file system backup.

I have seen this with some of the SQL Server Executable files and would expect other applications to therefore have the same limitation.

Note we hide automatic (Active File) exclusions from the job logs as if we didn't, on most servers, you would never get a completed sucessful backup job - there would always be exceptions listed against skipped files.

For reference SQL exe issue is described here:

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH77850