Backup Exec 10d, SQL 2005 and SharePoint Portal 2003 backup agent

[David_Chadwick]

Hi,

I'm running Backup Exec 10d with all the latest patches. I have a SharePoint Portal 2003 setup with the database living on an SQL 2005 backend.

I have the SharePoint Portal 2003 and SQL 2005 agent license keys installed.

The SharePoint Portal 2003 backup used to work perfectly when the SharePoint databases lived on SQL 2000. As soon as you create the SharePoint Portal 2003 "farm" in BE, the SharePoint databases on the SQL 2000 server used to become greyed out so that you couldn't select them (as they are now backed up as part of the farm). Anyone who has used the SharePoint Portal 2003 agent will know what I am talking about.

It seems that the Backup Exec agent doesn't work properly for SharePoint if the databases live on SQL 2005 (yes I am running the latest agent with SQL 2005 support). When you create the farm in BE the SharePoint databases no longer become greyed out, and trying to backup the farm just doesn't work properly.

I believe this to be a bug. My post is simply to alert Symantec to the issue and find out whether anyone else is experiencing it.

Cheers,
David

[Shilpa_pawar_2]

Hi,

Have you installed the following hotfix:

http://support.veritas.com/docs/280204

NOTE : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked "assumed answered" and would be moved to "answered questions" pool.

[David_Chadwick]

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

[Swati_Joshi]

Hi David!

We are aware of the fact put forward by you .

Actually,We currently don't support Sharepoint Portal 2003 on SQL 2005 but soon will be supporting it.

I would suggest you to go to the enhancement site and log a request for this feature.

Thanks and regards,

Note : If we do not receive your reply within two business days, this post would be marked "assumed answered" and would be moved to "answered questions" pool.

[David_Chadwick]

Hi Swati,

The fact that you acknowledge that you are aware of it is enough for me. I assume it'll be fixed at some stage. :)

Thanks,
David

[David_Chadwick]

Hi Swati,

I've just installed Backup Exec 10d SP1 and all the other hotfixes that I didn't have on my system. I then updated the remote agents on all my servers to the latest version.

The exact same problem still exists with Sharepoint as detailed in this thread.

Can you confirm that it has not been fixed yet?

Regards,
David

[David_Chadwick]

I'd like an update as to the status of this bug and confirmation that it still doesn't work with BE 10d SP1.

Sorry for this extra message. I was forced to add this when marking the question as unanswered.

[Gauri_Ketkar]

Hi,

As suggested earliar , I would suggest you to go to the enhancement site and log a request for this feature.

http://enhancement.veritas.com

Also subscribe to email notification for the further information on the issue

URL:http://maillist.support.veritas.com/subscribe.asp

revert for any further Query
Hope this will help you


Thank you
Gauri

[Michael_Cross]

Did the issue with SPS and SQL 2005 ever get resolved? I have a similar SharePoint deployment and I want to be sure the Backup Exec agents will work before I purchase them.

Thanks,
Mike

[David_Chadwick]

Hi Michael,

They were never resolved for me. In fact, I've just upgraded to Backup Exec 11d and it still doesn't work. I believe this is because we've also moved our SQL 2005 to x64 recently, so maybe it works properly in 11d if you have SQL 2005 on x86. I can't confirm that though.

Seeya,
David