Urgent Exchange Backup Failing

[Jog_Dial]

Hi,

I upgaded from BE10 to BE12.   As far as I was aware, we never had the advanced file open option.  I had been backing up our Exchange 2003 server for years.  No problems.  Using a remote agent.  Now with 12, all I haven't had a full backup  of it for over 2 weeks.  I have tried everything I can imagine.

When I try to do a full backup, like I used to with 10d, I now get

Completed status: Failed
Final error: 0xe0008485 - The item could not be opened while in use.
Final error category: Resource Errors

I never used to get this error with 10d.  10d I think used a shadow copy operation.   Now I don't even see where I turn on or off shadow copy, i must have turned it off now...   I had it turned on a couple of weeks ago and I got a full snapshop backup.   But now, I just continually get error querying the VSS status... and yes it is in a retryable state on the exchange server, and I can't get it to go back to no error unless I reboot the Exchange server.  Well I can't be continually rebooting the exchange server, that is ridculous.

I have applied the VSS writer hotfix from microsoft to all my remote agent servers.  As far as I can tell, the only difference is that the backup might work once.  Then the next time the VSS Writer exchange goes to retryable error, and that's it, it won't work again until a reboot.

I really need to get this fixed PLEASE!!!... it's just exchange 2003 on server 2003 Sp2.  all standard stuff that worked fine with BE10d.

I'm not going to bemoan the shortcomings of BE and new versions, I just reallly really need this fixed..,.  can someone give me any idea on what I should look for to fix? 

Thanks

[Vijay_S_Mishra]

Make sure that you are not using AOFO in the exchange backup job.

[Jog_Dial]

not using AOFO...

However, I was planning on running one big backup job for exchange SQL and files.   Where I would like to use AOFO, but if you turn that on, it works on the whole job right?  So I can't run one big backup job?

Anyway AOFO is off, and I get same results in original post.... why does it say it is in use?  This never happened with BE10D, can someone please tell me what to change?   I can't get my exchange server backed up.

[Jog_Dial]

ok...

It's Sunday, and I've just kicked off the same job that was failing above and it's now working and not giving me the "in use" error. Is it because I was trying to backup and the Exchange server was heavily in use, and now it's not? Surely that can't be a restriction on BE12? What about exchange servers that are used heavily 24x7? how do you back those up?

I really really don't get this. Does anyone else have these problems or does this work fine for all of the rest of you?

I have a clean install of BE12, all up to date, VSS patches applied, all systems Windows up to date and I just keep getting varying results. Just when I think I 've got something working, then it stops, or when something isn't working, then it starts working again.

I'm tempted to go on a BE Symantec course just to rip it apart with some of my own problems and see what they say... Maybe that's the way to get noticed. I've haven't heard anything good about their support so far in these forums that's for sure. I'm tempted to buy the support contract, but what annoys me is that I have to spend equal amounts of time fixing things as they do, and they want to reboot servers during working hours. On my last support contract I had a problem and after 3 days they hadn't fixed it and I finally figured it out from their own knowledge base. Can't say I'm too anxious to fork out for support from my experiences anyway.

Anyway, moaning aside, can anyone confirm the "in use" error on exchange server? What causes it, why am I not getting it now, and why was I getting it consistantly last thursday during the day and nothing whatsoever has changed other than there's probabably only a couple of people connected to it now where as there were a hundred or so on thursday.

Thanks

[KB1]

I think you need to go to the Settings --> Advanced option of the job and choose 'Never' in the AOFO section for the particular job. I had the same problem and this worked. Even though you don't use or have installed, if it's set to 'With a lock', it'll fail the job if any of your mailboxes are in use.

You might think about running the Full job when nobodys working and then doing a Differential job throughout the week......

[john11]

Did this issue get resolved? I am having the same issue on a Windows 2003 Server with Exchange 2003 and BackupExec 11d. It has worked fine until this error about "the item cound not he opened while in use". What is the cause and resolution of this issue? Is it a Microsoft update that caused this or is it Symantec Backup Exec related?  Indeed, rebooting the server resolves the issue. There must be a better solution that an daily reboot. Can anyone provide any more information on this issue? Thanks

[Anup]

This could happen if tha backup was performed while exchange internal maintenance was running.

Try backing up exchange throught NTbackup and see if it completes 

[john11]

Tried NT Backup. Same issue. Only reboot solves it so far. This is not good....

[Anup]

IF NT Backp fails then ..that means issue is with Exchange...

[Jog_Dial]

My problem just went away. No explanation. I have run exhchange backups when it is busy and not busy. I didn't change anything. I have since then set my backup job defaults to never backup files in use... but I'm not getting skipped messages on any mailboxes either... at the moment, everything seems to be running remarkable smoothly for nearly a week now.