Fail to backup from one of our virtual fileservers

[berg_lund]

Hi,

We have two virtual fileservers that have iSCSI disk connected to them and on one of them the backup is working and on the other it isn't.

Either it hangs on "Snapshot processing" and I have to cancel it, or I get this error message:

"V-79-57344-65072 - The connection to target system has been lost. Backup set canceled."

And under Exceptions it also says:

"- Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "\\xxxx.yyyy.intra\D:” Snapshot technology used: No.

The network connection failed during the snapshot. Check the network, and then run the job again”

I'm using the same version of agent as backup server is using and made sure that the services are running. I've checked that the port 10000 is open and not used by any other service. The servers are on different networks but the routing seems to be working, I can ping and browse all the files on the fileserver through explorer.

The weird thing is that I can usually browse the file server from Backup Exec to select which folders to backup but sometimes I get the error message:

"Failed to browse network. A network connection to the server could not be established"

The same error as described here:

http://www.symantec.com/connect/forums/failure-browse-network-connection-server-could-not-be-establi...

I also noticed that I can establish trust from backup exec to the fileserver. But if I go to the agent on the fileserver and remove the backup server under the tab publish, I can’t add it from there. I get the error message that "The trust between the Backup Exec server and the Agent for Windows cannot be established. A communication failure has occurred"

I appreciate all suggestions on what to do, I might be missing something very obvious but this problem is really starting to get on my nerves.

Regards,

Jonathan

[VJware]

Is the time on the affected remote server in sync with the BE media server ?

You could try manually deleting the certificates from the remote server and retry to establish a trust. On the remote server, browse to \Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS\Data directory. Rename the .cert and .key files. Restart the remote agent service. Under the Publishing tab of the remote agent utility, add the FQDN and IP address of the BE media server. And then try to establish a trust from the BE media server.

Rerun a backup and check.

Lastly, does the beremote crash on the BE media server. Check the event viewer for any occurence of event id 1000.

[berg_lund]

Hi Vjware and thanks for the speedy reply.

I did as you said, renamed the cert and key files and restarted the Backup Exec Remote Agent, but I still get the same error when I try to add the BE media server in the agent. Should I still try to establish trust from the BE media server?

They show the same time and are syncing to the same ntp server and I didn't find any indication on that any BE service had crashed.

[VJware]

Was the remote agent push installed or manually installed ? Push installing the agent typically establishes the trust and populates the publishing field as well.

When you enter the media server info under the Publishing tab, do you use the Backup Exec account for authentication ?

Do ensure this account has full control over the Symantec registry key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec) on the remote server. Ports 10000 and 6101 should be open as well. Do confirm the remote agent service is running when you add info under the Publishing tab.

[berg_lund]

Hi,

I used push install and I can establish trust when I do it from the BE server. It populated the publishing field with the IP address, the name and the FQDN.

But since there seemed to be some problems with the connection between the BE server and the agent I removed the entries under the publish tab and tried to publish it from the agent instead. I used a domain account that I’ve set up to use for backup operations and it should have all the privileges that it need.

I manually added the account to have full control over the Symantec registry key. The windows firewall is set to allow all inbound traffic associated with the beremote.exe. I also made a manual entry in the windows firewall to open up port 6101. I'm not that great at networking but I tried to use nmap and noticed that it still only said that port 10000 was open and used by the service snet-sensor-mgmt. But then I ran nmap against the other fileserver, where the backup is working and the exact same ports where open.

The remote Agent Service seems to be running fine and I even tried to restart it.

After I had done that I still couldn't publish the server form the agent (same error message) and when I establish trust from the BE server it still seems to work but fails with the same error message:

"V-79-57344-65072 - The connection to target system has been lost. Backup set canceled."

When I establish trust from the BE server, which of my accounts does it use?

[berg_lund]

Posted answer in the wrong place. Is there any way I can remove this post?