Restoring a Hyper-V vm fails accessing staging directory

[Mike_Sr_]

Hello all. I'm attempting to restore a single Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V virtual machine using BE 2012, but it fails when trying to access the c:\Temp staging directory. Here is the exact error:

The job failed with the following error: An error occurred while creating or accessing the directory specified for this operation. Check to make sure that the B2D folder and/or the temporary path specified for this operation are valid.

And-

V-79-57344-4611 - An error occurred creating or accessing the directory z:\TEMP specified for this operation. Ensur...

I've tried changing the path to another drive, same error, checked permissions to the directories, they are accessible by the service account, but no luck. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[pkh]

If you are restoring from tape, duplicate the backup set to disk before doing the restore.

Ensure that you have sufficient space on your C: drive to stage the entire VM.

[Mike_Sr_]

I'm apologize, I've left out important information:

• We are restoring from disk.
• We have plenty of space on the C: drive.

Also, the job fails immediately after the initial phase. Thank you for the comments pkh-any idea why this is happening?

[VJware]

What is the type of the disk where the backup sets are stored ? Is it non-NTFS formatted ?

Have you recreated the restore job to rule out any corruption issues ?

Lastly, we may need to enable debugging for finer detail regarding the restore failure..

[RahulG]

As per the error you posted it is failing to access Z:\temp , did you changed the staging location for the restore Job ?  

Z:\Temp is this accessible and an NTFA drive ??

[Mike_Sr_]

VJware, yes the disk is NTFS and I have recreated the job without success.

RahulG, I attempted to change the staging location to a disk on the locally connected JBOD device, the same device that we write our backups to.

I read somewhere that the 'PureDisk' service should be running-is this applicable? I did try with the service running, but received the same error.

[Kunal_Mudliyar1]

Hi Mike Sr,

Is the Backup Exec patched to Sp2 , if not please run a live update and patch backup exec.

Also if the Hyper V and the Backup Exec servers are different update the remote agent on the Hyper V server too.

Thanks!

[Mike_Sr_]

When I attempted to run Live Update it failed with an error, LU1852 I believe, and I found a suggestion to reinstall Live Update, which I did, but now it won't run at all because it fails to register. Two steps forward, one step back. Any idea how I can get Live Update working again?

[Kunal_Mudliyar1]

Please download and install SP2 on the Media server from the following link

Backup Exec 2012 revision 1798 Service Pack 2

Also upgrade your hyper V server afterwards from the Backup Exec console..

[Mike_Sr_]

I have installed SP2 on the media server, but have yet to install it on the hyper-v servers, which leads to this question:

Is a reboot required after the service pack is installed? These are production servers and, if a reboot is required, I'll have to schedule for after hours. Also, backups are now failing because of the different software levels-is this expected?

Thanks,

[Kunal_Mudliyar1]

Yes a reboot is required but BE will not force the reboot , you can choose to reboot later.

Yes the error is expected, are you still seeing the error which was there pre SP2?

[Mike_Sr_]

Yes, the restore still fails trying to stage to the local directory with the same error.

[Kunal_Mudliyar1]

Mike, if you see the same error even after updating the remote agents I would suggest logging a support case with Symantec for this issue.

Thanks.

[Mike_Sr_]

One more question Kunal-do the guests also have to be updated?

[Kunal_Mudliyar1]

If the guest has these applications :

Exchage,SQL,AD or Sharepoint.

Yes!

else NO

[Mike_Sr_]

The issue was ultimately resolved by installing SP2, but here are some observations and a suggestion.

• The error stating that the job could not access the staging directory is a misnomer, the directory is not written to, at least from what I observed while watching the backup.
• Restoring a VM creates a directory, Microsoft Hyper-V, which is not a big deal, but it does create clutter-is this by design?
• Lastly, it would be nice if BE prompted for the correct media needed for a restore job, instead of failing with a generic error. I used Commvault previously, and if the media was not available/online, the software prompted you for the correct media.

Thanks to all for your assistance.