"One or More Recovery Points are NOT available at their locations"

[MoonCat]

I have just upgraded our BESR from version 8.02 to the new 8.5 that I was made aware of via an email from upgradecenter@symantec.com. My installation has happily worked until I performed this upgrade, none of my previous backups are recognised in the status view in the BESR console and I keep getting a pop up message warning "One or More Recovery Points are NOT available at their locations". I thought it was because I needed to carry out a new baseline which I duly did and it completed but now it reports the same for the one I carried out this morning. I have read a support article (Document ID: 310701) that deals with this issue but the resolution is to upgrade to version 8.5.

For your information BESR 8.5 is running on a Windows 2003 Server Standard and backup to 2 different NAS boxes, 1 is a Buffalo Terastation the other is an Iomega StorCentre Pro 150d.

Is anyone else experiencing issues and if so is there a resolution or do I need to remove 8.5 and reinstall 8.02.

[Jon_R]

It sounds like your backup history was corrupted during the upgrade. In order to fix this, the job history and backup jobs will need to be deleted and recreated.

1. Stop the Backup Exec System Recovery service

2. Browse to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Symantec\Backup Exec System Recovery\ and delete all .PQH files in the "History" folder and all .PQJ files in the "Schedule" folder.

4. Rename the folders containing the backups, adding _OLD to the end.

5. Start the BESR service

6. Setup your backup jobs with desired configuration and storage locations

7. Let jobs run.

Make sure that you rename all backup folders to ensure that you don't overwrite previous backups. This will break all links to the older backups and they will have to be deleted manually if you would like to have them deleted, BESR will not be able to see them or delete them automatically.

Message Edited by Jon_R on 10-10-2008 04:39 PM

[MoonCat]

Thank you Jon_R for the solution, so far it appears to be working but I have one question, I carried out a test backup this morning but when viewing the status overview the backup appears with a blue circle with a question mark in it. I clicked on the link in the top right of the console window that was for 'legend' but this icon is not even listed in the help for the product. Can you or anyone else enlighten, is the backup OK to use or indeed completed satisfactorily.

Willie

Footnote: The icon has now turned to the normal green circle with the tick in it. I am assuming that there is an issue reading the backup status while another backup job is running to the same destination folder. Software working as normal again.

Message Edited by MoonCat on 10-13-2008 11:06 AM

[MoonCat]

Thought I would post an update to my previous post, I have just completed doing a baseline of our whole server data set now and the status page reports all drives backed up but all the icons within the calender have this blue circle with a white question mark and the pop up has started again reporting "One or more Recovery Points are NOT available at their locations"

Any further help would be most grateful.

Willie

[David_F]

The BESR agent(s) may be loosing their continuous connection to the Buffalo Terastation & Iomega StorCentre Pro 150d storage locations. What kind of connection do we have to these two NAS devices? You can open a ticket with Symantec Technical support where you can then send in SAS log files generated using the following utility: http://www.apparentnetworks.com/sas/310/ to test the connection between the agent(s) and the storage devices.

Secondly on a test system exhibiting the same symptom, if backing up to a simple window share consonantly (i.e. Advance | Backup jobs | Right click on job | run job with options | Full -or-incremental) if you begin to see the same symptoms again. If not we are looking at either a network or NAS related issue; however if you do see if selectively starting up the system using the MSCONFIG utility with just essential Microsoft & BESR related services picks up the older job files. BTW, in the *.PQH files now on this client, opening them up while our services are stopped, do they show what image files 'should' be present at the storage devices, and are those files really still being stored by the NAS?    

[Cetnamys]

I am having same issue after BESR 8.5 upgrade.  I uninstalled my BESR 7.0 and freshly installed BESR 8.5 with out saving jobs or histroy from BESR 7.0.  I don't think it is NAS related issue.   Because BESR 7.0 ran for a year on same NAS with out any issue.  Please let me know if you have found solution.  Thanks

[mopperle]

Same problem here after upgrading from BESR 8.03 to 8.5. Tried the suggestions above with no result. the icon in the systemtray show "Status OK" but when openning BESR I get the same message as others.

Backing up to my NAS device (Buffalo Terrastation) worked before with BESR 7 and 8.0 without any problems!

Otto

[Cetnamys]

This issue is also not reolved with BESR 8.5 SP1 update.  I also did the fresh install of 8.5 sp1 same issue re-occured.  So I think the NAS devices, back job and histroy files are not the culprit.  One intresting thing I noticed is excactly at 5 minutes interval the calender icon turns from blue to green (for 3 seconds) and then back to blue ... so on. May be this could be a good clue to the Symantec engineers.  What process or program is refreshing every 5 minutes? Please fix this.

[MoonCat]

Firstly apologies for the delay in responding as been busy with other issues not related to BESR but was comfortable in the knowledge that the backups were working (as I tested restoring from them) just the console was not displaying the status correctly.

I currently backup to 2 NAS devices, originally I was having issue with both of them but it is now only the Buffalo Terrastation device, for information the other is an Iomega StorCentre Pro 150d. For the record my console is displaying exactly the same behavior as yours "Cetnamys" in that the colour changes on the icon every 5 mins or so, additionally if you hover your cursor over the back ups in the calendar it still shows the times when the backups perform. Is BESR reading this information from the NAS device or just the local job history file?

I agree that it is some piece of code within BESR that has changed as everything was fine until the 8.5 upgrade. Because of this I have advised the 6 other locations within my company to delay the install until further notice.

[David_F]

With 8.5 comes some performance keys, see if teh collective you have better results backing up to the network shares once one or more of these performance keys has been applied (even on SP2 releases)

BESR 8.5 Backup Performance – http://support.veritas.com/docs/307579

Thanks

[Cetnamys]

This is a known issue.  Will have to wait for the patch to be released. 

http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/310701.htm

[David_F]

Has anyone apply the performance registry changes and have better results in regarding to this error (i.e Less frequent or not at all now). Do those having this issue direct the agent’s backups, experiencing this symptom the most, to a simple window share still exhibit the issue with as high of occurrence or at all?

I will check on the status of Document # 310701 listed above.

[Rufguy]

My NAS is a D-Link DNS-323 and I have been having this problem with BESR 8.5 on SBS 2003.

I applid the registry changes (AltPerformance1) and the problem persists. I also enabled network throttling to 75 mbs to perhaps account for the slower drives in the NAS. I had been getting errors with the backups themselves (Insufficient system resources, E7D10046; Unable to read from file, EBAB03F1) and these seem to have gone away.

So, mixed bag with the changes. Still getting the message that one or more recovery points are not available but at least the backups aren't failing.

John

Message Edited by Rufguy on 12-16-2008 11:09 AM

[David_F]

To verify that this is not a corrupt history file issue for some community members; that is where the error reporting that one or more recovery points are not available is in fact referring to recovery points listed in the history /managed backup destinations location but has long since been removed from the actual storage location either deliberately (e.g. through removing the files manually with windows explorer) or by the BESR agent following the retention schedule, can those who are experiencing this issue run the Managed back destination wizard and see what recovery point / recovery point sets it refers to and visual check the sub-folder it is referring to see if they are actually all there. Secondly, while BESR services are stopped on an affected client, locate the current *.PQH (e.g. BESR history file) and open it in notepad. Run a check for .v2i and .iv2i files to see what it lists truly corresponds to the storage location sub-folder for this client.

[mopperle]

Hi David,

I don't think it's a problem with history files:

After talking with the support, I did a complete uninstall of BESR 8.5 with deleting of all folders, history files etc.. My system was definitely clean. Reinstalling BESR 8.5 and backing up to a different folder on the NAS brought the problem back again. Only falling back to BESR 8.0.3 resolved it.

Otto

[Cetnamys]

"One or More Recovery Points are NOT available at their locations"  issue is resolved with BESR 8.5.3.

[SSM]

Some previous problems might have been fixed in BESR 8.5.3 version, but I am facing a new one.
The BESR service stops immediately after starting a scheduled imcreamental backup. It completed a scheduled base back up next day but did not report completion fo the backup process thru email notification (or log in the  BESR log file). Subsequently  when tried to open the BESR console, got "Unable to connect to BESR agent" message. Has anyone experienced this? Did you find any solution?

Thanks

[criley]

SSM,

Please start a new thread for your issue as it is a different problem....