Backup Exec 10D Suddenly Dog Slow

[George_Mills]

My system had been backing up fine for about year taking about 3hr's for 180Gb.

This is with a Tanberg Automation Library 8 Tapes (1 Cleaning Tape) with LTO-3 drive.
Running Windows 2003 SMB SP2

I'm doing a full 5 days a week rotating to a different tape each time.

I moved the tape drive to rack and everything has gone in the crapper since then.

First it would not backup at all because the drive and library would not stay online.

I updated the drivers, firmware and all Backup Exec Patches and still would not stay online.

Finally I noticed it got knocked off the Tandberg drivers and was using generic ones.

Since then the drive stays online.

It will backup fine for 2-3 days.

Then it will suddenly take 25-75 hours.

One time I let it run to 75 hours and it got an error regarding Shawdow stuff got a catastrophic error and it needs to be manually turned on.
Why did it work the prior 3 backups?

I think my initial problem was the driver got knocked off but now all these updates are causing problems.

I clean the drive automatically every 2 weeks (10 backups).

Yes I powered the drive down and the system.

I may replace the tapes, but I'm so tired of throwing guesses and $$$ at this stuff.

[Gilly-Bhoy]

If it's slowing/stalling on Shadow Copy it may be a problem with VSS.
Do the following on the affected server:
Open a command prompt and type vssadmin list writers
hit enter. Verify that all of the writers are in a stable state.

If not then reboot the affected server and run the command again. If you have the error to hand that appeared when you let it run for the 75 hours then post it here.

Just on the drivers for your Autoloader. You should be using Symantec Drivers and ensure the Removable Storage service is stopped and disabled.

Hope this helps,
Gilly

[George_Mills]

I'm using tandberg driver for the autoloader and hewlette packard for the LTO drive.

I'm really very nervous touching drivers again because it was a bear to just get the drive and loader to BOTH come up online.

I mucked with Backupexec drivers and not while trying to figure things out.
Once I finally loaded this pair it finally came online and I believe that's how it had been running the past year but I had forgot.
I saw evidence of where I saved the new drivers and I usually do things the same way and when I went down that path sure enough I had god down that path before.

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>vssadmin list writers
vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool
(C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp.

Writer name: 'System Writer'
Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220}
Writer Instance Id: {f7815324-d1e7-433f-93f5-c6de82123a85}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'MSDEWriter'
Writer Id: {f8544ac1-0611-4fa5-b04b-f7ee00b03277}
Writer Instance Id: {bacce937-9f66-4154-b6ab-1ce20a8a795e}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'FRS Writer'
Writer Id: {d76f5a28-3092-4589-ba48-2958fb88ce29}
Writer Instance Id: {77402c96-2a25-44e1-9c73-1fba32d99664}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Event Log Writer'
Writer Id: {eee8c692-67ed-4250-8d86-390603070d00}
Writer Instance Id: {ba39e0fd-5d1f-41e1-80ea-c93d5a412b8f}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WINS Jet Writer'
Writer Id: {f08c1483-8407-4a26-8c26-6c267a629741}
Writer Instance Id: {c99d183a-16a1-43ef-b1d6-efb25f9caa53}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'NTDS'
Writer Id: {b2014c9e-8711-4c5c-a5a9-3cf384484757}
Writer Instance Id: {c1929907-85b0-4b13-92bf-e68603e99f44}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'Registry Writer'
Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485}
Writer Instance Id: {787473ec-4336-466e-ab65-5e91ace6a9a3}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'IIS Metabase Writer'
Writer Id: {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366}
Writer Instance Id: {c5d906af-0d7c-4a77-89db-ffef5a10c362}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer'
Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f}
Writer Instance Id: {dd972926-74b1-430c-a97f-837bbd488f69}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

Writer name: 'WMI Writer'
Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0}
Writer Instance Id: {8ea0b8bf-48c6-4182-b9d6-88be63beb586}
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error

[George_Mills]

After reboot and setting shadow service to automatic

I got this.

Job ran for normal 3 hr's with the correct amount of bytes and ended with this.

Job ended: Thursday, July 30, 2009 at 3:05:20 AM
Job completion status: Canceled by service shutdown
Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe0008821 - Job was recovered as a result of Backup Exec RPC service starting. No user action is required.
Final error category: Job Errors

For additional information regarding this error refer to link V-79-57344-34849


Errors
Click an error below to locate it in the job log
Verify- C: V-79-57344-33861 - The media operation was terminated by the user.
Job completion status: Canceled by service shutdown

[George_Mills]

I think I may have found the problem. This describes it perfrectly.

Applies to Windows 2003 SP2

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/933653

Article ID: 933653

Volume Shadows can have a Memory Leak.

This can cause it to run dog slow or fail.

It's currently failing every 5 days or so.

Will try to follow up, applying it today.