Hi,
> Have you installed the following hotfix:
> http://support.veritas.com/docs/280204
Yes, I sure have.
I can backup SQL 2005 databases with no problem, that's not the issue. The issue is the logic in Backup Exec for SharePoint Portal 2003. Normally Backup Exec "discovers" every component of SharePoint once you give it the name of one of the front end servers. It does not work correctly if the databases live on SQL 2005. It works fine if they live on SQL 2000.
It's very easy to reproduce this behavior. All you need to do is setup SharePoint Portal 2003 sitting on SQL 2005 (which is supported by Microsoft), and then try and create the farm in Backup Exec. The problems are immediately obvious. It's a bug.
It's difficult to explain exactly the issue unless you are personally familiar with the SharePoint Portal 2003 backup logic in BE. Within BE you create a SharePoint farm. To do this you just have to give it the name of one of the SharePoint front end web servers. Backup Exec then "discovers" the entire SharePoint infrastructure and creates an object within the backup selection pane for the farm. From that point on, you select this object to backup SharePoint, rather than actually worrying about selecting resources to backup on the servers directly.
When it is working correctly, this "discovery logic" normally greys out the SharePoint databases on your SQL server. So if you go directly to the SQL server in the backup pane, and click on SQL, you are able to backup every database EXCEPT for the SharePoint ones. That is because to backup SharePoint you must select the SharePoint farm object rather than any component of SharePoint directly.
With the databases on SQL 2005 this doesn't happen. The farm object is still created, but it's not right. You get various errors you when you click on different components of the object, and the SQL databases do not become greyed out. If you try and run a backup job with the farm selected it just doesn't work.
I've setup a full test lab from scratch just to make sure it wasn't unique to our production environment and it was exactly the same. The SQL 2000 lab worked fine, the SQL 2005 one did not.
Cheers,
David