Hi everyone, As a preface I don't 100% know what I'm talking about so if I say something that is wrong or sounds stupid then that's why.
I'm not quite sure how to ask my question because I'm not even sure what is causing my problem. My manager asked me to restore a deleted email on our exchange server using the backup tapes. I thought through the Shadow Copy service I would be able to do this so I popped in the tapes and took a look.
When I browsed through the tapes I found out the Exchange portion of our backups hasn't successfully backed up since July 2008. I looked at the Sym Exec logs and there has been this error every day.
Backup- \\filesrvr01.jomar.local\D: New VolumeV-79-57344-34110 - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "Microsoft Information Store". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). VSS Snapshot error. Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) cannot communicate with the writers. Check that the Volume Shadow Copy Service is started, and check the Windows Event Viewer for errors related to this service.
Then I noticed below the error log there was this interesting tidbit, I'm not sure if it is relevant. EDIT: I just realized this failure is on a different server so I imagine it has nothing to do with my problem.
AOFO: Initialization failure on: "\\e21datasvr.jomar.local\C:". Advanced Open File Option used: No. AOFO: Your evaluation copy of the Advanced Open File Option has expired. To obtain a license for the Open File Option product, contact your Backup Exec solution provider. The backup will continue with out using the Advanced Open File Option
I also found this under the Job History tab by expanding "Set Detail Information - Backup \\filesrvr01.jomar.local\Microsoft Information Store\First Storage Group"
Set type : BackupSet status : CompletedSet description : Resource name : \\filesrvr01.jomar.local\Microsoft Information Store\First Storage GroupLogon account : System Logon AccountEncryption key : No Error : 80042318 - 0x80042318 (2147754776) Agent used : YesAdvanced Open File Option used : Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS)Image used : No Byte count : 0 bytesRate : 0.00 MB/Min Files : 0Directories : 0Skipped files : 0Corrupt files : 0Files in use : 0 Start time : Thursday, December 11, 2008 12:12:10 AMEnd time : Thursday, December 11, 2008 12:54:36 AM
I don't work on the Exchange server a lot so I don't know what was changed or done to it that suddenly caused the backups to fail. Is there a way I can check to see what changes were made to the server itself around the time of the last successful backup?
Does anyone have any ideas on what my problem might be, or at the very least where I should start looking and researching? Right now I don't even know if I'm looking down the right road. I can provide any information necessary. Any kind of help would be appreciated. 
