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Backup Exec 2014 Hyper-V - Terrible customer support

lukeb123
Level 4

Case ID:  06990743

I spoke to the most abrupt, uninterested, and rude customer support agent yesterday.  He kept putting me on hold with no notice, didn't want to help, didn't take over the screen to do some basic tasks, and kept repeating himself to click things being extremely impatient.  He disregarded my comments of Veeam being able to do the exact same VSS full HyperV backup and kept blaming shadow copies, even though none of the writers are showing errors (specifically the HyperV writer).

 

His outcome of the call:

SOLUTION/WORKAROUND: Not an issue with Be and issue with shadow copy, informed the user to contact microsoft.

10 REPLIES 10

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

...are you running Veeam and BE together on the same server backing up the same resources?

Thanks!

VJware
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Sorry to hear about your poor support experience. I'll have the case reopened & have a different engineer assist you asap.

lukeb123
Level 4

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/a3301f74-37c2-4bcd-8356-93b5d44a1a33/exchange-2010-vss-backup-error?forum=exchange2010


I've found this which could be a resolution (kind of) but either way, It's Backup Exec issuing the wrong commands!  Veeam works a treat, as does Windows Server Backup so It's very clearly a Backup Exec issue (why am I not surprised..).

lukeb123
Level 4

Hey Craig,

The only reason I did install it, was because I needed to get a solid VM backup from the customers site after spending hours/days playing around.  It was just the trial and it worked a treat to get a simple vbk to a removable drive.  I have since uninstalled and rebooted both the physical and virtual Servers.

lukeb123
Level 4

Thanks VJ!  I'm the last person to add bad comments to feedback reports, but if he dares send me one for that case, I hope he has a good relationship with his manager..

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

OK cool, was just curious as this might have been an issue. But if it existed before installing Veeam, then it clearly isn't.

Thanks!

lukeb123
Level 4

Unfortunately not Craig :(  BE 2012 (let's be honest) was probably the worst Backup Software I've used in terms of reliability.  The GUI wasn't as good as 2014, but it wasn't as bad as people made out.  It did however make us technical staff look like buffoons with constant backup failures which were completely unexplained, making it hard to be taken seriously by some customers.

I've now upgraded this particular customer to 2014 and apart from this issue which has always been there, I will say I'm very impressed with it with regards to the other backups and of course, the amazing job monitor being brought back.  Hopefully BE can make a comeback with this release.

CraigV
Moderator
Moderator
Partner    VIP    Accredited

BE 2012 is right up there with Windows Vista, Dead Rising on Nintendo Wii (yes, I actually bought it!) and trying to play Battlefield 2 on new hardware...it didn't work really well and Symantec got panned universally for it (and probably rightly so!).

BUT...BE 2014 seems to have arrested that move which is good to see.

Thanks!

lukeb123
Level 4

You're damn right there!  The Wii U is amazing though!!  The new Mario Kart must be one of gods own creations, lol.

My boss gave us the hardest times over that 2012 release.  It started to dip with BE 2010 with the insane RD1000 formatting issues.  He just couldn't (and wouldn't try) understand why we were getting so many backup errors, and it was so difficult to explain to the customer without giving away that their new fancy backup Software was about as useful as a chocolate fireguard.  Symantecs solution was to just reboot and I really feel sorry for the support team in that period.  Had I been working there I'd have casually walked out one day from stress.

2014 seems to be a great improvement so far I will admit though!  That job monitor gave me a huge sigh of relief as we still have a lot of customers with Software assurance.  I do hope for Symantecs sake that 2014 IS the product it once was and more, as many IT professionals I know have given up complete hope and gone to Veeam with no regrets.

lukeb123
Level 4

Ok, so i've been having ESE errors when the backup tries to run and fails immediately after. This points to Exchange VSS errors so leads you down the wrong path.  After hours of following false leads, I finally found that sharepoint can bizarely create these errors after installing SP1 and not running.  I ran the following command:

PSConfig.exe -cmd upgrade -inplace b2b -force -cmd applicationcontent -install -cmd installfeatures

...which resolved most of these errors, but I still got ESE Information Store Shadow Copy instance aborted errors.  At this point, I'm still thinking it's a corrupt Exchange store and/or logs, as suggested by Microsoft.

Long story short, after much digging into SQL writer service permissions having to be local administrator, and not local system account, I decided to disable this service as BE is installed on a Domain Controller so doesn't have a local admin account to use as suggested in some articles from MS!  All of a sudden, I was in business!!  ESE VSS events were logging succesfully and I'm now performing a full image backup finally.

 

Although this seems like a Microsoft issue, the fact that Veeam backed up fine, along with Windows Server Backup, does still point to BE.  I still don't consider this a resolution because had the customer actually used SQL on this Server (they just use SBSMonitoring and BE instances) there wouldn't be a backup of SQL available that can utilizie GRT, but would have to perform maintenance plans and have those added to the backup routine for DR.