backup agent lost connection

[Andrew_Walmsley]

The backup has failed 3 nights in a row now.

Night 1 (Tues 3rd), the verify on the backup failed as the verify stopped responding at 33%, to stop the verify all services had to be stopped and restarted again, so no useful logfiles on failure created, just failure to communicate with agent (as I stopped it).

Night 2 backup failed with
e00084f8 - The network connection to the Backup Exec Remote Agent has been lost. Check for network errors.

The backup agent service had crashed some 1:45 mins after the backup starting and was stopped.
I restarted the service.

Event log reports
Faulting application beremote.exe, version 10.0.5484.0, faulting module BEDSMBox.dll, version 10.0.5484.16, fault address 0x0001dae4.


Night 3 backup failed with
e00084f8 - The network connection to the Backup Exec Remote Agent has been lost. Check for network errors.
The service has been stopped.

Event log reports
Faulting application beremote.exe, version 10.0.5484.0, faulting module BEDSMBox.dll, version 10.0.5484.16, fault address 0x0001dae

some 1:36 mins after backup started

Tonight is the permanently kept monthly backup and I need it to work.

The backup had been running fine for the past several weeks with no problems, no alterations have been made to any settings.

They system is a Windows 2003 server, backing up data only on itself, mainly MS EXchange, to an IOMEGA SCSI REV Drive. A full backup is approx 22GB.

Veritas version is 10 with hotfix 7, 8, 16 and service pack 1 installed.

[Michael_McKenne]

Did you try rebooting the server. I have seen this fix many problems with backups.

How is the agent configured? Did you try a test backup of 5 GB to see if it completes? Are you on a switch or hub between the server and client? How is it configured? Are you full duplex or auto on your NICs? I have seen hard setting the NICs and switch ports improves backups and prevents loss of communication.

[Andrew_Walmsley]

Friday backup failed as well.

Rebooting the server this morning before too many people are in and started the backup again (This will take another 2+ hours to complete, maybe more with users on it).
The server is supposed to be high availability and rebooting is a last resort.

The backup fails after backing up 12GB out of 20, not tried a short backup, but assume that it would work given it runs for 1.5+ hours before failing. The failure is always on exchange.

[Andrew_Walmsley]

The reboot seems to have solved the problem, although why it was ony the beremote service crashing is still a mystery.

[Kerm]

If you need to avoid a reboot you can also try stopping/restarting the BEX services on the system logging failures plus stopping/restarting the services on the BEX server. Sometimes one or the other resolves problems.

[David_Lamberton]

Just for those of you coming across this thread whilst trying to fix a similar problem...

I agree with Kerms last post.
When we have a problem like this with one of our clients, restarting the services is usually a suitable and less-volatile method when compared to restarting the server.
To Restart the services:
Tools > Backup Exec Services>Start All ServicesMessage was edited by:
David Lamberton

[Mike_Snyder]

I have a customer that seems to have the same issues failing when it hits the Exchange backup and getting beremote.exe errors. I restarted the BE services seemed to have fixed the problem. The customer was also getting licensing errors indicating that his number of Exchange licenses had been exceeded.

Q:
Does anyone know if there is any possibility that a licensing problem could interfere with the backup of Exchange?

Thanks,
Mike