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SSR 2013 Agent is holding a connection open on a CIFS share

esp1958
Level 3

From our SSR management server I'm creating jobs that schedule backups for quite a few servers (about 50) in the same domain.  I'm pointing their backups to a CIFS share on another storage unit, but that storage unit accepts only 32 connections at a time.

Once 32 machine connect to that share to perform their SSR backup, none of them releases their connection -- even after their backups are completed.

Is there a way to make them release their connection?

All the servers being backed up are either 2008 R2 or Server 2012 (mostly R2).

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
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The SSR MS itself also holds a connection open to each backup destination.

So may I ask you to mark your post as solved?

Regards Markus

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11 REPLIES 11

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

Yes: Create a post.cmd with a net use * /d /y

esp1958
Level 3

The connection stays established even after running your suggested command -- probably the SSR client sees it stopped and reconnects?

Doing a "netstat" shows it connect both before and after the Net Use /Delete... :

TCP    10.1.1.8:52602      DellDR4100Device:microsoft-ds  ESTABLISHED

The SSR Management server doesn't even show up in the list of Active Connections.

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

This may help: http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH163260.

esp1958
Level 3

The article you linked exactly matches my issue.  Unfortunately the connection stays open even after stopping the SSR service; I feel like a cat chasing a red dot laser.

None of the workarounds will work for me:

1. The vendor will not increase the number of connections

2. Cannot buy more CALs (because of #1)

3. Stopping VProSvc does not break the connection

4. Rebooting client machines is not an option

 

criley
Moderator
Moderator
Employee Accredited

I checked with a colleague who dealt with a customer that ran into this issue a while back.

It seems as though a service restart doesn't actually help, so the article I mentioned needs to be modified.

If the other workarounds are not acceptable (and I can understand why), the only other solution I can think of is to increase the maximum number of concurrent connections to whatever you are backing up to. Is that possible?

esp1958
Level 3

Unfortunately I can't get the maximum number of concurrent connections changed on the device.  It's a Dell DR4100 backup and deduplication appliance -- evidently each connection uses a huge amount of cpu for deduplication and compression so they've limited connections to 32. If we were using Backup Exec or some other BU software, it would be perfect since only one connection would be used -- this is the intended usage. The DR4100 is screaming fast.

If we could get SSR to release each connection when it finishes a machine's weekly backup, it would be super easy to be able to stagger the backup times.  They go very fast and we only have about 60 machines.

The only way I've found to break a connection is to put a bad password in when setting up the backup.

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
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Did you run the command as a post.cmd or when beeing logged on to the machine. It needs to be run as SYSTEM.

esp1958
Level 3

I set up a Post-recovery-point command file with the following; hope it's alright to use the wildcard "fn*" so I don't remove legitimate connections:

net use fn* /D /Y

After running the job, it doesn't appear to have broken the connection with that command.  I think SSR must poll to make sure it's not released because the remote machine says it's been connected 61+ hours.

Is it possible it doesn't run as System?  Maybe it uses the credentials that I used to access the batch file?

I sure wish SSR would release connections -- I don't mind keeping the connection to the Management Server, but keeping the backup location UNC open throws everything off.  Maybe they can't figure out a way to close one but keep the other open?

The storage unit will be getting a software update that's supposed to increase the number of connections to 64, which will be plenty for my purposes.  I'm sure others will still be restricted.

Thank you for all your suggestions!

 

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
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Sorry, your're right. It is run in the context of the user you use to access the NAS device.
 

Markus_Koestler
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

The SSR MS itself also holds a connection open to each backup destination.

So may I ask you to mark your post as solved?

Regards Markus

esp1958
Level 3

Thanks, Markus -- I'll mark as solved.

To summarize, the SSR Agent will keep a connection open to the management server, as well as an open connection to the UNC it is directed to back up to.  This is typically not an issue unless, like me, you have an appliance that will accept a limited number of connections (in our case the limit is 32).