Backing up Outlook PST personal folder files

[Richard_Senda2]

Hello,

A large number of our Outlook users have PST files which are stored on a network file server.  I am well aware that Microsoft do not support the use of PST files on servers accessed over a LAN or WAN, but we have what we have.

When NetBackup tries to backup the PST files on the server, for some of the PST files, the following error is shown:
ERR - failure reading file: F:\PST\John Doe\archive1.pst (WIN32 33: Unknown error)

I guess the error is caused by the user leaving their Outlook open which in turn keeps the PST file open at the time the backup job is run.  But the odd thing is though, if I backup the PST files by running the job manually, all of them back up no problem, this issue only seems to ocurr when the backup job is run automatically using the scheduler.

Is there a way to chuck people off the PST file server so that the backup job can run successfully, or is there anything else that can be done?  I have seen in various postings that the backing up of PST files requires the NetBackup MS-Exchange agent, I don't believe this to be correct, as there is no Echange server running on the PST server, I can't see how using the MS-Exchange Agent would work.

We are running NetBackup 6.0 MP7.

Many thanks,

Richard.

[dami]

The win32 error messages translates to: "33 The process cannot access the file because another process has locked a portion of the file.  ERROR_LOCK_VIOLATION"

I cant understand how the manual backups can work as oposed to the scheduled backups  unless it has something to do with the snapshot (VSP/VSS).  Sure PST files can be backed up without an exchange agent unless they are open (locked) and big.

I dont if there is a way to "chuck" people off outlook without potential risk of corruption of the PST files.

[ISyed]

Hi,

As dami mentioned, I would try first by disabling VSP/VSS in the host properties for this particular file server where the PSTs are stored and see if this fixes the issue.

[Scott_Lundberg]

We have a similar environment here, where we have clients that are not attached to an exchange server and have (sometimes very large) PST files.  But we have them store them on their local hard drives.  At a predefined interval (a week) we put a login script in that copies their PST files to the network share so that it can be backed up.  This prevents the problem with the open locked PST file.  

I would not try to boot people from their PST file, it will corrupt it.  Backing it up while it is open probably won't work consistantly either.  Try restoring one of the PST files from a PST that had an open client during backup and see if it can open the file without using scanpst.exe to repair it...

Not knowing your environment, maybe you should move the PST files to the local drives and then script a copy process to another drive that can then be backed up.  This is similar to a cold backup of a database...