MS-SQL DBBACKEX failure from third party scheduler ?

[Jim-90]

Problem : Running MS SQL backups from a third party scheduler (MS SQL Scheduler) with no hard coding of user ID or password refuses to use the NBU SQL userID and password in the windows registry.

Anybody found a better solution than what we have found to date?

So far found:

• It doesn't work and the use of the "encrypted file" appears to be a myth.  There seems to be no recent documentation on this encrypted file creation and usage. So far support have recommend TECH5647 as the solution.
• Making the SQL user that NBU has in the registry with its encrypted password a local admin will work.  For security reasons this is not a desirable solution.  The NBU SQL user is set as a SQL admin on the box and in AD.  
• Making the SQL backup user have read access to:

              -- The registry location where the NBU user ID and password is kept +

              -- The location where the BCH file is kept

              -- NBU install area. Suspect it may require write access to the NBU log area.       

TECH5647

In document TECH5647 it describes "By omitting the userID and passwords from the batch file, you can ensure that NetBackup for SQL Server will read the default parameters from an encrypted login file" and that file can be found under  install_path\DbExt\Mssql\Logins\ when you followed the procedure described in the tech note. 

That tech note is 14 years old and probably every related document, including the current manual, refers to the "encrypted file" without any explanation.  Looks like the modern version of NBU doesn't create that file and probably 14 years ago didn't use the registry as a location to store the encrypted user ID and password. 

[Yasuhisa_Ishika · Accepted solution]

On which user account are you running dbbackex and NetBackup Client Service? By NetBackup 7.6 for Microsoft SQL Server Administrator's Guide, both must be identical. BTW, can you run initiate manual backup from master server?

• NetBackup for SQL Server must be started with the same account as the NetBackup Client Service.

The backups that are initiated from an automatic backup policy are started with the NetBackup Client Service so the same account is already in use. However, you can start an SQL Server backup through NetBackup for SQL Server or through dbbackex. Then your logon account must be the same as the NetBackup Client Service account. Then your backups can be candidates for the alternate buffer method

[Michael_G_Ander · Accepted solution]

Jim, I have discovered the the dbbackex.exe needs to be run as administrator with an account that has sysadmin access to the SQL server.  Should say the Netbackup Client service was using the default local system account in that case. This was on Windows 2008 R2, have not tried on 2012 with the added security there.

 A question can you run the bch file successfully by SQL agent GUI with the user used for the scheduling ?

The dbclient log might give some indication to what the problem is.