Failed to quiesce 0xE000959a need better reporting on which server failed

[Moltron1]

Every now and then I get this error when backing up VMware guests with AVVI.  My question here is on reporting.  I backup about 100 VMs, some configured with AVVI individually but most are broken into smaller groups.  So when I get one of these failures in a group, the job log just says that this happened, but does not say on which server.  I have to either look at the ones that did work and use processes of elimination to find out which one did it, or go into vSphere and pretty much do the same thing with the logs in there.

Why can't Backup Exec simply call out the server that failed in the log!?  Is there something else I can do where I can just look in BE and find the answer without playing games trying to find the missing server that didnt get backed up?  Please don't tell me to setup each one individually :-).

Thanks in advance...

[lmosla]

Hello,  The 2012 Administrative Guide http://www.symantec.com/docs/DOC5211  describes the available Reports on page 592 the one for Failed Backup Jobs is on pg 606

[Moltron1]

I just checked and ran the report.  It seems worse as it shows that all the servers involved in the VM group failed with the same error, when after tracking it down only 1 server failed to snapshot.  So the while programmatically the report may be correct, logically it is wrong as it is listing servers which failed and they actually suceeded. 

[lmosla]

Are all your servers fully patched with Live Upates? I think there was an issue that a hotfix fixed a report problem after SP1 was installed also see this link for the snapshot error: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH129724

Hope this helps,

[Moltron1]

My media server is fully patched.  I did stumble on that one today actually, and bookmarked it as it was actually a pretty good article.  However, I don't need help on fixing the quesce error, my question is with the reporting of which server did it.

[Colin_Weaver]

Unfortunately the display of the server name in the VMware job log kind of depends on exactly where in the backup process the error occurs. Late enough on the process then the error will appear in a container/box for the specific virtual machine. Too early however and it will appear under the generic/surrounding container of the media server itself, most often between two containers for identified virtual machines (unless it appears at the end or beginning of the log or you have mulitple VMs with a similar failure next to one another) 

If you individually choose your VMs in an order in the selection then it is easy to identify the affected VM as the job log will be the same order, however if you choose some kind of container object as the selection list then it gets harder as the exact order of selections is then not obvious making it difficult to work out. 

As far as I know, other than manual elimination against what you know did backup, then the only other way to work it out is to debug the remote agent process on the media server, but then you have to be used to what can be ignored in a debug log and what actually matches your problem - which again is a difficult thing to explain.