Backup job takes long time to start

[puneetd]

Hi,

Every time when I run backup of exchange server 2013 using NetBackup server It taking long time to start. When we check vss writers on exchange server, Every Time "microsoft exchange writers" showing "waiting for completion". 

We restarts the vss writers sometimes it writers becomes stable and sometimes server reboot needed.

Please suggest me what we can do for the issue because this is not a proper solution that we restart the server every time.

[RiaanBadenhorst]

This is not a netbackup issue. Microsoft vss needs to quiesce the databases and make a snapshot. Once that has been completed the backup jobs will be generated and it will start writing.

Investigate your exchange

[Lowell_Palecek]

Are you doing GRT backups? If so, NetBackup needs to gather mailbox information by means of PowerShell cmdlets that sometimes take a few minutes. Mailbox gathering should be done in advance by the NetBackup Discovery Framework service (nbdisco), but if that has not occurred at backup time, it's done during snapshot processing before the backup job is kicked off.

Please always state your NetBackup version when asking a question about operations.

[Tape_Archived]

If the Exchange backup has not been done for a long time it may take time to figure our number of logs (usually in thousands) that needs to be backed up and then truncated.

Please check with your Exchange Admin about the pending Logs that needs to backed up. Also ask Exchange Admin to review events and logs for more clue, if required enable logging on client side and check for more details.

[manatee]

i found this thread not closed so maybe i can put in my 2 cents.

when it comes to VSS issues, i found the best way to quell VSS is to provide it a small drive to use as a "scratch pad".

in my file server where i have a 600GB drive, VSS would always complain until i provided a 10GB drive soley for VSS to use. after that, never got any complains from VSS.

hth.

[Marianne]

I am always amazed when users have a big enough issue to post here, and then do not bother to reply to attempts to help.

@puneetd seems to have done the same for most of his recent posts.... 

[manatee]

it can't be helped coz most of the time, those admins posting here are under a tremendous amount of pressure so the tendency is post everywhere and anywhere they thought they could solicit help. in the process, once a solution was found, they tend to forget all the other posts they have raised.

i just ignore them. tech life is already hard enuff :)

[Lowell_Palecek]

@manatee mentioned provisioning VSS with enough space. That's important, but the result of not doing so would not behave like this.

A copy-on-write snapshot takes very little space to start, and grows as writes occur to the drive. When VSS runs out of space, it deletes the snapshot. Since that happens out-of-band to the backup, NetBackup bpkar is surprised that it can't find a data file on the snapshot, or an ongoing file read fails, etc.

What happens next depends on the Exchange version, the NetBackup version, and the host configuration options. In current NetBackup, if bpbkar can't find a data file on the (non-existent) snapshot volume, the backup fails with an error that says so.