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BackupExec 2012 SP4 problems

HNeumann
Level 4

Hello,

after installing SP4 for BE2012 the server runs poorly. The jobs cannot access the devices properly. Restarting the services work for a short time.  I think we have to open a call. We have the caso options installed... Anyone the same problems?

68 REPLIES 68

JaapB
Level 4

Same over here. After installing BE 2012 SP4 jobs got stuck and queued. Restarting the services temporarily solves the problem. Since upgrading to SP4 we had to restart the services every day.

We are running BE 2012 SP4 on a windows 2008 R2 server.

 

VJware
Level 6
Employee Accredited Certified

Hello JaapB, marcodoy & jwoppert,

Would you pls log formal support cases for us to investigate as currently there aren't any known issues as mentioned above caused by installing SP4. (in fact almost all cases which we investigated led to a different cause than SP4)

Pls do PM/email me the case numbers once they have been logged. Thanks.

jwoppert
Level 3

Just sent you the case number that I have filed with Symantec.

jwoppert
Level 3

Still have the same issues. Seems like the backup engine keeps failing. I can restart the services and it works for a little bit and then back to not working.

marcodoy
Level 2

I sent you the case tooo.

LSW
Level 3

Same story for me.  Pre SP4 everything was working quite well in comparison to a year ago.  Now performance very slow, jobs queuing when idle devices are available.  Duplicate jobs to tape sometimes run but then the tape stays in the drive rather than returning to the library with BE believing a job is still running when it isn't.  Only option is to restart the services so all the other jobs that are running then fail.  Job Engine failing on a daily basis.

I don't see how we have any other option but to look at another product.  It took us a long time to get BE 2012 stable and it feels like all that work has been undone.  I cant keep spending all day looking after BE 2012.  Case open with support.

 

 

3sprovider
Level 1
Partner

Last Sunday (5/4/2014) we roll SP4 to about a dozen different customers.   Exact Same problem, jobs are hanging.  We can restart the Job Services but that is getting old.   We have 4 different cases open and the symantec engineers are attempt to gather logs. 

LSW
Level 3

We were backing up to disk, duplicating the backup sets to tape and then duplicating the original backup set to dedupe.  After a week of very unreliable backups I recreated all our jobs to backup to tape only.  Since then not one failure.  It's not what we want to do but to get some reliable backups is a step in the right direction.

So I don't know if I'm alone with this but the issue would appear to be with the backup to disk or duplicating of backup sets from what I've seen so far with SP4.  Support have been trying to get hold of me so I'll be dropping them a line shortly.  I'm away from the office next week so I'm reluctant to let them do too much whilst I'm getting some backups, even if it is a step backwards.

lukeb123
Level 4

I see it's another successful release from Symantec.....

I WAS going to apply this to try resolve my issue of not being able to backup Hyper V machines with 'writer errors' (of course, there are none..) but I think I'll give it a miss.

I've found with 2012 that it's better to live with the smaller problems rather than install a SP and create 10 more major ones.  What on earth is going on over there?  It should be illegal to release such junk.

DaveyMG
Level 4

I've had similar problems since installing SP4 with jobs staying in queued state for a long time. Also had a lot of random "lost communication" failures on jobs but that seems to have cleared since I updated all of the remote agents.

In my experience BE2012 works well when everything is working properly but it becomes a nightmare to manage when things go wrong. There is little control available on the job queue. After a failure I end up with a lot of jobs being ready, waiting for resources, but I can't control which ones run next. I can't cancel them until they start to run and I can't reschedule or hold them to run later. When the backup schedule is disrupted by a failure I need to be able to control the queue so I can ensure that critical backups take priority once things are running again.

DD1984
Not applicable

We have exactly the same issues after upgrading to SP4
- Backup stay queued forever
- Services restart works for half a day.
- DB repair helped for a couple of days. (case closed)
- New case made and now they lost all of the other logs (so lets start from the beginning)

Any solutions known?

Oleg_Oz
Not applicable

We have the same problem..

Waiting for support(case opened). Waiting for solution..

jwoppert
Level 3

Have not heard anything back from Symantec. Sent in jobs logs and Backup Exec diagnostic logs. Still having the same issue. WIll restart services, will work for a little bit.

One job on Friday which was a full backup was held running for over 2 days and stuck in the same position. Because this job was stuck, it failed to backup other servers over the weekend. Symantec keeps telling me that it is nothign to do with Service Pack 4, but I say they are wrong. ALL of these problems happened at the end of the installation of service pack 4. I am about to uninstall Backup Exec and reinstall it and upgrade to service pack 3 again.

Anyone else have any input?

Robert_H_
Not applicable
Employee Accredited

Please send your open case number and we will review it.  You can do this through private message or e-mail.

Thanks

Mike55
Level 3

Had the same problem with my library.

Try running C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\tapeinst.exe through to the end.

I know it doesn't make any sense.

Mike55
Level 3

This software is just awful.

I ran on SP1 and SP2 for a long time, finally getting them somewhere close to stable.

I upgraded to SP4 and a week or so later my jobs just started queuing.  The deduplication resource just cycled from active to online without any jobs getting processed.  The usual solutions, restarting services and rebooting, didn’t help for long.

I built an entirely new BE2012 SP4 server and identical hardware starting with the SP4 media and remade all of the jobs again, but severely limited deduplication and GRT usage.  That ran okay in testing, but once I ran all of the production jobs, they started queuing.  At first I assumed that it was the deduplication that was holding things up, but then it seemed like it might be the tape library.  I ran tapeinst.exe as I saw suggested.  It didn’t make sense to me and it didn’t seem to make any changes, but jobs started running once more.

I then developed problems with deduplication jobs.  “Please insert overwritable media"  I don’t have any control over that.  I can’t manage deduplication media in this version.  After looking around online, I saw that some people had luck with running a deduplication reclaim space sequence (ref TECH130103) which I’ve done since 2010.  That resolved the problem with all but 1 job.  From what I remember, I deleted many of my backup sets related to that job and more.  Again, I have no direct control over media in this version.  I ran another reclaim.  I deleted and remade the failing job.  That seemed to get me past that problem.

Recently, the backup exec deduplication engine crashes repeatedly.  Something I haven’t seen before.  Usually it’s the BEengine that crashes.  I can’t resolve it and I’m giving up.  I don’t feel like going back to SP2 or SP3, so I abandoned deduplication today.

Deduplication and backup to disk storage seriously needs cleanup utilities.  When the BEengine crashes or something else fails, material is left in those resources that can’t be removed.  This material wastes space and causes cataloging to fail.  Cataloging job times should be measured in minutes, not hours or days.  I have very powerful hardware, use it.

Those of you out there that have more than just a couple of TBs of seasoned storage resources, just try running some index and catalog jobs.  If you have storage that has been used for a good while, it’s likely that after the unbelievably long job execution it will terminate with an error.  The error will usually be that it didn’t like some of the media.  Something you really can’t do much about in this version.  Do this with caution for those with old deduplication storage, since the job will likely run for days.  Keep in mind, that this is what you would have to do to recover if you lost the catalog.

Tony77
Level 2

We have also exactly same problems after installing SP4 to backup exec 2012.

I spent lot of time to tracking the problem and finally found some kind of "solution". Of course it´s possible that the problem in your case is different.

 

I made only following thing:

-I stopped Backup Exec Agent Browser service and disabled it.

-Restart the backup server

 

Now backup jobs are running again. (We cannot made any backups before that)

I know that there are other coin side to stop that service, but the backups are more important.

We aren´t opened support case to Symantec yet.

 

 

 

 

Mark_Stephens
Level 3

I'm having issues at ALPA as well, have opened 2 cases with support, problems persyst.

Had run BE2012 SP2 level for a long time, had issue with BEDB db & 4GB limit.  Noticed that SP3 was to correct that runtime SQL issue for db size.  Went to apply SP3, noticed SP4 was out, so applied it  (it was early April) and the problems have been ongoing since.

Today when checking I have 5 jobs active but ZERO activity, see attached.    I am thankful for finding this article.  Why, when I take the effort to open several cases (see below, after alot of troubleshooting on my own) aren't I directed to this forum article by Support?  Instead I've been through several iterations of check this job, recreate this job, change these options.  Had initial case open for post SP4 issues, somehow morphed into Exchange issue.  Currently have cases open for both SQL and Hyper-V and I've mentioned that I didn't think its related to any of these agents/backup jobs/efforts it's something post SP4.....no reply on that.  There will be now & this will be escallated.

 

Case history- Initial Case May 19-

Case # 06606201 - Since applying SP4, BE having a lot of issues. Jobs getting cancelled. Previous jobs not running. has been created.  This morphed into Exchange issue (the job was suffering from other issues BE)  This was closed, however issues persyst so opened another case.

Case # 06632888 - SQL & Hyper-V related issues. Current case.

Seems of late the reply from support is that a new product (BE2014) is due to be released in June and that I'll love that!  Perhaps they should focus on fixing what has been broken by SERVICE PACK 4- one they released with what looks like little testing in real world environment.

Come on MAN, like many others have said, recreating jobs (that previously ran well) and Terminating BE Services is getting old, hopefully a solution is found soon.

Frustrated with better things to do in Northern VA / DC

Mark

 

DaveyMG
Level 4

On my BE 2012 server I've noticed that bengine.exe is always running at 50% CPU on task manager. Also, jobs that appear to have hung do perform some work if left long enough. I suspect that bengine.exe may be spinning its wheels for some reason and being prevented from performing actual work.

Ken_Johnson_II
Level 2
Partner

DaveyMG,

I've noticed something similar since SP4. The bengine.exe process is using 25% of the CPU even though no jobs are running. Even if I put the job queue on hold it continues to use right around 25% of the quad-core CPU. We have never waited around long enough to see if all the jobs eventually complete.

Has anyone tried uninstalling BE completely and installing just up to SP3? Did you have to restore a pre-SP4 copy of the database or was it able to use the post-SP4 database? I'd really hate to scrap it all and start from scratch, but that's what I'm looking at as the next step. I'd open a case, but this thread so far seems to indicate that opening a case with Symantec doesn't help.