BE2010 R3 SP3 concurrent backups to B2D - GRT backup set folder vanishing prior to verify.

[James_Crawley]

I have a server that for a few months has successfully run concurrent backups to the E:\BtoD directory, until the last few weeks.

One job now gets this in the Job Completion Status:

"Job ended: Tuesday, 1 October 2013 at 7:51:55 PM Completed status: Failed Final error: 0xe0001203 - An error occurred while creating or accessing the directory specified for this operation. Check to make sure that the B2D folder and/or the temporary path specified for this operation are valid. Final error category: Resource Errors For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-4611"

and this in the Errors:

"Click an error below to locate it in the job log

Verify- <name of VM being backed up>
V-79-57344-4611 - An error occurred creating or accessing the directory E:\BtoD\IMG005853 specified for this operation. Ensure that the directory is accessible and can be written to. "

Device and Media Information shows:

"Drive and media information from media mount: 1/10/2013 5:30:01 PM
Drive Name: BtoD
Media Label: B2D000054
Media GUID: {924d3446-26e0-4bb6-9111-ccf1b633f93d}
Overwrite Protected Until: 1/01/1900 11:00:00 AM
Appendable Until: 31/12/9999 11:00:00 AM
Targeted Media Set Name: Daily Disk

All Media Used
 B2D000054
 IMG005853
 IMG005855"

Backups Set Detailed Information shows:

"Media Label: IMG005853
GRT backup set folder: E:\BtoD\IMG005853
Transport mode 'nbd' was used for the disk '<VM Name>-000001.vmdk'
Transport mode 'nbd' was used for the disk '<VM Name>-1-000001.vmdk'
Backup Exec has discovered and protected 'C:' on virtual machine '\\<name of VM being backed up>'.
Backup Exec has discovered and protected 'D:' on virtual machine '\\<name of VM being backed up>'."

No other jobs used E:\BtoD\IMG005853, yet I cannot find it on the drive, what is happening to it.

Everything I've found online refers to the .\\PDVS directory (or something similar) and says to make sure you can access it, but my errors don't show that particular directory as being the cause the way those support suggestions show, and I CAN access E:\BtoD\, the accounts that run the backups have full access.  In the example above the IMG005855 directory was created successfully, used, and remained afterwards. Same for the B2D00054 file.

Are there other logs I can search to find what is happening to that directory other than the individual separate job logs? I thought concurrent backups were supposed to work for B2D so other jobs shouldn't conflict? Does anybody else have any suggestions?  Also having a problem with the exchange server, but it's a different error so I'll create a different thread for that.

[pkh]

1) re-create your job and try again

2) use a command prompt and run chkdsk /f on the disk with the B2D folder.  Make sure you use the /f switch so that any errors can be corrected.

[James_Crawley]

All jobs recreated from scratch for tonight, will report back tomorrow the results.

E:\>chkdsk /f E:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process.  Chkdsk may run if this volume is dismounted first.
ALL OPENED HANDLES TO THIS VOLUME WOULD THEN BE INVALID.
Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N) y
Volume dismounted.  All opened handles to this volume are now invalid.
Volume label is STAGING.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
  180736 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  1155 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  0 EA records processed.
  0 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
  180854 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
  180736 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  59 data files processed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

1461779455 KB total disk space.
 722079016 KB in 5101 files.
      2152 KB in 61 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    291403 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
 739406884 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
 365444863 total allocation units on disk.
 184851721 allocation units available on disk.

E:\>

[James_Crawley]

Last night's backups ran ok, although I did re-organise them so no two backups ever ocurred concurrently.  I shall keep it like this for the rest of the week, and if all ok then next week I'll try setting a few of them concurrent.

Going through past backup logs, no two ever mention the same directories, so if it is one backup job deleting the directory of another, it doesn't log any info to say as such.

[James_Crawley]

Further experimentation shows if the backups don't overlap at all then there's no problem. It's only when they do overlap that directories go missing. To my understanding, I should be able to do two backup-to-disk operations at the same time with no interference, but this does not seem to be the case.

Does anybody have any suggestions to allow me to make the jobs simultaneous? I'd like to shrink the backup window for all jobs, and concurrent backups, something BE2010 is supposed to be able to do, is the best way to do it.