Snapshot provider error (0xE000FED1): A failure occurred querying the Writer status.
Running Backup Exec 12.0 Small Business Server Suite Rev. 1364 og getting random failing file data-backupjobs with error code E000FED1: Backup- E: DataV-79-57344-34110 - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "Shadow?Copy?Components". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Snapshot provider error (0xE000FED1): A failure occurred querying the Writer status. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. Writer Name: Event Logs, Writer ID: {EEE8C692-67ED-4250-8D86-390603070D00}, Last error: The VSS Writer timed out (0x800423f2), State: Failed during freeze operation (9). Writer Name: Windows Internet Name Service, Writer ID: {F08C1483-8407-4A26-8C26-6C267A629741}, Last error: The VSS Writer timed out (0x800423f2), State: Failed during thaw operation (10). When runningVSSADMIN LIST WRITERS - command from prompt I'm given the following output: C:\Documents and Settings\xxx>VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS vssadmin 1.1 - Volume Shadow Copy Service administrative command-line tool (C) Copyright 2001 Microsoft Corp. Writer name: 'System Writer' Writer Id: {e8132975-6f93-4464-a53e-1050253ae220} Writer Instance Id: {e1eae7cb-e621-4ab2-ba63-e5a534cc5e7a} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'FRS Writer' Writer Id: {d76f5a28-3092-4589-ba48-2958fb88ce29} Writer Instance Id: {51359454-ca5e-44f2-bbde-6fd81712dcc1} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'SqlServerWriter' Writer Id: {a65faa63-5ea8-4ebc-9dbd-a0c4db26912a} Writer Instance Id: {dc2f12b7-d951-41ba-8724-bc474e7a5f7e} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'MSDEWriter' Writer Id: {f8544ac1-0611-4fa5-b04b-f7ee00b03277} Writer Instance Id: {5cb6d93a-bb72-4a0d-b90b-e6174402c580} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'WINS Jet Writer' Writer Id: {f08c1483-8407-4a26-8c26-6c267a629741} Writer Instance Id: {a0bbbb7a-8d3d-47ae-93b2-7f7e008365d0} State: [10] Failed Last error: Retryable error Writer name: 'NTDS' Writer Id: {b2014c9e-8711-4c5c-a5a9-3cf384484757} Writer Instance Id: {3be2277a-66e1-43f1-a484-446320b9681f} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'COM+ REGDB Writer' Writer Id: {542da469-d3e1-473c-9f4f-7847f01fc64f} Writer Instance Id: {23e6136d-6943-4108-90cb-a40089bad1b9} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'Registry Writer' Writer Id: {afbab4a2-367d-4d15-a586-71dbb18f8485} Writer Instance Id: {8ae68311-ead2-4af4-8009-874337783ecc} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'Event Log Writer' Writer Id: {eee8c692-67ed-4250-8d86-390603070d00} Writer Instance Id: {bc0eb6b5-835b-4a97-a8d0-7ba5f6db426e} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'IIS Metabase Writer' Writer Id: {59b1f0cf-90ef-465f-9609-6ca8b2938366} Writer Instance Id: {8a3a101e-0dfd-46a2-9334-8ac0d57bf929} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error Writer name: 'WMI Writer' Writer Id: {a6ad56c2-b509-4e6c-bb19-49d8f43532f0} Writer Instance Id: {af7bf8db-a57e-47a8-a0b5-3a754d46f58a} State: [1] Stable Last error: No error The following warnings and errors is shown in Windows Event Viewer: Event Type: Error Event Source: ESENT Event Category: ShadowCopy Event ID: 2004 Date: 09-10-2012 Time: 01:09:09 User: N/A Computer: SERVER01 Description: wins (3316) Shadow copy 13 time-out (70000 ms). Event Type: Warning Event Source: VSS Event Category: None Event ID: 12290 Date: 09-10-2012 Time: 01:09:29 User: N/A Computer: SERVER01 Description: Volume Shadow Copy Service warning: ESENT ERROR {f08c1483-8407-4a26-8c26-6c267a629741} WINS Jet Writer: -2402. hr = 0x00000000. Event Type: Error Event Source: Backup Exec Event Category: None Event ID: 34113 Date: 09-10-2012 Time: 06:20:30 User: N/A Computer: SERVER01 Description: Backup Exec Alert: Job Failed (Server: "SERVER01") (Job: "MANDAG-DATA") MANDAG-DATA -- The job failed with the following error: A failure occurred querying the Writer status. The data selected for the backup-job is pure files and System State. The server is a Windows Small Business Server 2003 SP2.Solved18KViews1like12Comments
Solution for VSS exceptions with VMware guests / VM tools
Hi everyone, We have been experiencing VSS issues with VMware guests in regards to the installed Backup Exec Agent and a previously installed VMware Tools VSS option. Uninstalling the VMware Tools VSS option in various ways including restarts did not fix our issues. If you search the internet for solutions, you find many attempts but no real solution or explanation. One of our admins spend several hours with the Veritas support without a solution, he was about to escalate the issue with them, when we found the root cause and could actually fix our issues. First the steps to solve this: Uninstall the VMware Tools VSS option (no restart will be requiered) Make sure VMware VSS service was deleted If this is not the case, you might need to do so manually and remove additional DLL's etc. as well as restart the system, but this is independent from this solution You might have already done steps 1 and 2 but you still get VSS exceptions from the backup that says you have more than one VSS agent installed: V-79-8192-38331 - The backup has detected that both the VMware VSS Provider and the Symantec VSS Provider have been installed on the virtual machine 'hostname'. However, only one VSS Provider can be used on a virutal machine. You must uninstall the VMware VSS Provider. Now you wonder what causes this and you get stuck You could uninstall the Veritas/Symantec Backup Exec Agent and only back the system up per VMDK You would lose the GRT / granular backup / restore capabilities Check your registry for the following reg key HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\BeVssProviderConflict If this key exists, but your VMware VSS provider is uninstalled, you need to follow up with step 5 Open a notepad as administrator Open this file in the notepad C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware Tools\manifest.txt Search for the following two entries: Vcbprovider_2003.installed vcbprovider.installed Make sure both of them are set to FALSE, most likely one of them is TRUE Run a test backup This test backup now should not show the exception anymore The registry key should vanish (refresh/press F5) without you taking action So what happened? You uninstalled the VMware Tools VSS provider, but this manifest file did not get updated. We actually could see that it sometimes does get updated and sometimes does not. This seems to be some kind of issue with the VMware Tools uninstalled/installer. But why this manifest.txt file? As we found out, there scripts that get executed by Symantec/Veritas Backup Exec before the backup. You might find them in two locations, and it seems to depend a bit on the Windows version which script is executed (at which location). You could edit them both and just undo the checks in the scripts, but this wouldn't be correct. It is more correct to update the manifest.txt file. If you want to, you can check the date/time of the manifest.txt file before you change it - you might see it was not updated while you uninstalled the VMware Tools VSS provider (assuming you did only do this and not do additional installs/uninstalls within the VMware Tools / please note as well that this only is true when you still experienced those issues). Now, back to those scripts, you find them here: C:\Windows C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS\VSS Provider The name of the script that matters: pre-freeze-script.bat This script checks several DLLs, registry entries, paths and on Windows 2008 and newer the ProgramData-Path for this specific manifest.txt file and the two entries mentioned. Once you uninstall the VMware VSS provider, and the file did not get updated, you might see this issue and wonder how to solve it. The solution is to simply update it to mirror the uninstallation of the VMware VSS provider (vcbprovider). We double checked this with several installations and could see if the file actually gets updated, those two values are set to FALSE, if it doesn't, at least one of the values remains true, what causes the pre-freeze-script.bat to write the registry key mentioned earlier and therefor causing the issue in the backup - exceptions. If you still have the same issues after updating the manifest.txt, simply check all the DLL's that are mentioned in the script and make sure they don't exist. You might also consider to manually delete the registry-key (it seems to be just a dumy-key) to make sure there is no issue that prevents the script from deleting it. Make sure it does not re-appear after a backup! Otherwise you might still have some DLLs left on your system that cause the script to re-create the registry key. Hope this helps a few of you out there. This was an ongoing issue for a while and I came accross those issues many times ever since Windows 2008. This applies to Windows 2008 R2, Windows 2012, Windows 2012 R2 and pretty sure to Windows 2016 as well. It helped us getting rid of those issues completely and actually not even needing a single restart of the guest VM to solve the issues (removing the VMware VSS provide did not need a restart). Regards Florian RossmarkSolved14KViews2likes10Comments
Backup Exec log files 38GB
We've had an issue with our server due to lack of free space. We've examined the contents of the drive and "C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\Logs\" is taking up 38GB of space. Can you tell me why it would take up this much space please? More importantly how do i cap it at say 10GB? We are using Backup Exec 2010 R3 on a windows 2007 sbs server. All our backups are backup to disk folders on removable drives and we backup also backup exchange and SQL. Thanks, your help is appreciated ThanksSolved12KViews1like4Comments
BackupExec 2010 dropping tape drive offline
Hi, This is a new topic to re-open the issue discussed here: https://www-secure.symantec.com/connect/forums/tape-drive-goes-offline-second-backup Just to recap on the issue itself: Running BE2010 Trial on Windows Server 2008 R2 x64. Hardware is Dell R710 rack server, connected to a HP Ultrium 1760 LTO4 SAS drive via a Dell PERC 6/E SAS Adaptor card. This is what’s happening: Setup and run a backup job with full verify. I’ve tested up to a 250GB job and it completes fine the first time around. After completion of first job, rerun the same backup job (after tweaking the media overwrite/append etc settings) The job immediately fails, reporting the drive as offline – cannot bring drive back online using BackupExec administrator Close BackupExec administrator, restart BackupExec Device/Media service (which also restarts associated service dependencies). Re-open BackupExec administrator - drive appears to be online again, ready for another job to be kicked off. I’ve completely replaced: Numerous LTO tapes The Dell SAS adaptor that connects the Dell server to the HP rack chassis The HP Rack chassis that houses the 1U internal HP LTO4 Ultrium 1760 SAS drive, SAS adaptor board and all The internal HP LTO Ultrium 1760 drive itself We’ve verified that all above component drivers and firmware are fully up to date. This problem occurs with both Symantec Tape Drive drivers and HP's official LTO4 tape drivers, To me, the following facts suggest that the problem lies with BackupExec itself: After the drive goes offline, a simple restart of the BackupExec services seems to bring it back online again If the drive goes offline, and I stop the BackupExec Device/Media service, I can still access the drive using HP LTT utility, and HP Data Protector Express – only BackupExec detects the drive as offline. We’ve replaced all possible hardware components and the problem still remains This problem only ever occurs with BE, I'm testing with HP Data Proctector Express and MS's Data Protection Manager - all work fine. Luckily, I haven't bought a license for BackupExec yet, however this means I doubt Symantec Support will be willing to spend too much time on it, so I might be forced to go with MS's Data Protection Manager instead if I can't get a resolution soon. Has anyone seen/resolved this issue before? AlistairSolved8.8KViews1like40Comments
How to Backup & Restore data to and from a DFS Share?
Recently we implemented DFS on our Network. For this we had to adopt our Backup strategies to correctly backup the DFS Shares. So not only selecting the Folders itself.... but also selecting the Shadow Copy Components. We are using Backup Exec 2010 R3 fully patched. So far so good. Looks like we have made a successfull backup! Time for a restore try.... (always good to test right?) What did I do?..... I renamed one of my folders: Folder1 --> Folder1.old Checked both of my DFS servers and both servers showed this folder renamed. Then, time for a restore. Created a restore job. Created a selection list and found no data in my folders.. Hmm, thats right. Wrong place. Needed to look at the Shadow Copy Components Voila, I found the correct files. Now lets restore my folder I just renamed. The folder is not available anymore on the server. Available though on backup. Started the Restore and voila..a few minutes later the files appeared back on my storage server. Restore successfull right? Unfortunately not... :-( After a few minutes the following event showed up in my DFS Event Log of the server I just restored to (Windows Server 2008) Closer investigation revealed that my just restored folder was not replicating at all to my other server. Worse yet... No replication at all. That is... Not on this replication group. Others work fine luckily. After about 30 min the next event showed up in the EventLog The DFS Replication service initialized the replicated folder at local path D:\Data\Departments and is waiting to perform initial replication. The replicated folder will remain in this state until it has received replicated data, directly or indirectly, from the designated primary member. After again approx 30 min the first 4202 & 4204 logs appear Event: 4202: The DFS Replication service has detected that the staging space in use for the replicated folder at local path D:\Data\Departments is above the high watermark. The service will attempt to delete the oldest staging files. Performance may be affected. Event: 4204:The DFS Replication service has successfully deleted old staging files for the replicated folder at local path D:\Data\Departments. The staging space is now below the high watermark. It looks like DFS is doing something.. Rebuilding its DFS database or rechecking its entire folder structure.. Who knows.. But anyway...Now 5 hours later. My folder is still not replicated to the other server :-( Couple of things that came to mind.... The files restored from Backup have most likely the same or older date/timestamp. Therefore the DFS conflict mechanism might start to intervine. The restored file might end up in de "\DfsrPrivate\ConflictAndDeleted" folder because a newer file exists on the other server. I guess it is like restoring Active Directory. The restore must be authoritive of some sort. Unfortunately I cannot find any documentation about this. I have not tried a redirected restore. A direct restore should work in my opinion. Also, there might not be enough diskspace to handle data twice in case of large restores. Question: What is the correct way to restore files to a DFS server? Why did Backup Exec break my DFS? Anything I can do in the meantime except being patience? Thanks for reading my post? Your thoughts are greatly appreciated! Remko de KoningSolved7.7KViews1like5Comments
Alert Media is write protected but it is not.
Write protected problem Specs: w2k3 server SP2 , backupexec 10.1 SP3 rev 5629,LTO2 400Gb tapes, HP Storageworks Ultrium 448. Always used the same tape with the same drive and now all of a sudden I get the alert that my tape is write protected and that I should remove the write protect tab. Of course the write protect tab is not used. I' am able of doing an inventory but a quick erase or write to the tape results in the alert. Please can anyone tell me what is going on? Thanks!Solved7.4KViews1like13CommentsSnapshot technology error (0xE0008516)
Hi, We have a the below things:- 1. BE 2012 on Win 2008 R2. 2. Hyper-V Host server on win 2008 R2. 3. 7-8 number of VMs running on each Hyper-V host server. 4. All the VMs were in the EMC VNXe 3100 storage server connected with local network of 1 Gbps. The iSCSI LUN were mounted on to the Hyper-V host server using iSCSI initiator. All these connection were in local network. Below were the error:- Backup- Datacenter.xxxx.comV-79-57344-34070 - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\TALLYSERVER". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Snapshot technology error (0xE0008516): Resources specified for snapshot do not have any valid data on them. Check if files were deleted or renamed. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\xx21server". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). V-79-10000-11226 - VSS Snapshot error. The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot technology selected returned: "Unexpected provider error". Ensure that all provider services are enabled and can be started. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. V-79-57344-34070 - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\XX1SERVER". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). Snapshot technology error (0xE0008516): Resources specified for snapshot do not have any valid data on them. Check if files were deleted or renamed. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. V-79-40960-38467 - Virtual machine "MSSQL" has been excluded from the backup because it must be put in a saved state to back up. Backup - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\TFS2010". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). V-79-10000-11226 - VSS Snapshot error. The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot technology selected returned: "Unexpected provider error". Ensure that all provider services are enabled and can be started. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\XYZServer". Snapshot technology used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). V-79-10000-11226 - VSS Snapshot error. The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) snapshot technology selected returned: "Unexpected provider error". Ensure that all provider services are enabled and can be started. Check the Windows Event Viewer for details. V-79-40960-38467 - Virtual machine "Oyster_Centos" has been excluded from the backup because it must be put in a saved state to back up. Exceptions Click an exception below to locate it in the job log Resource VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\OracleDB Server2 was found in the previous instance of this job, but it is not present in this job. The backup options or selections for this job have changed since the last time it ran. Backup- VRTSRV::\\Datacenter.xxxx.com\Hyper-V?Virtual?Machine\TallyV-79-57344-38721 - Failed to mount one or more virtual disk images: Error mounting disk(s): E_IMG_FS_READING_OBJECT_FAILURE (0xe000fedf).Solved6.5KViews1like5Comments
BE 2012 and Data Domain w/ DDBoost
Background: So we have Backup Exec 2012 and two Data Domain DD620's. We have all the required licensing including the Data Domain DD Boost and replication licenses. I have installed the Open Storage Technology (OST) plugin 2.5.0.3 as suggested for the version of BE. Both DD boxes are visable and connected to my BE server. I have foud some documentation and a video that explains some of what I am looking for but not entirely and most of it is for BE2010. The BE 2012 documentation from DD is not up to date yet. I am trying to setup backups as my tape drive has had enough and is not working properly. Anyone I have talked to just says you backup to it, then I continue finding little things that need to be done. No verify, no precompression, some said no deduplication in the job, other said server side dedupe because DDBoost manages it with OST plugin. Too much information and not enough people knowing what to tell me. The DD weekend support guys don't know the software titles they just know the hardware. I need help now unfortunately... Question: What settings do I use for Backups? I have Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL agents.6.5KViews1like32Comments
Security Update for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (KB970892) fails to install
Microsoft released Security Update for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 (KB970892) on October patch Tuesday. It fails to install on the SQLExpress 2005 SP3 x64 BKUPEXEC instances on two of my my BEWS 12.5 SP2 media servers, as well as on a couple of other servers running SQLExpress 2005 SP3 with other products, e.g. VMware vCenter Server, HPDigital Sending Software 4.0. Various forum posts found by Google suggest that having any of the SQL Server services disabled may cause this problem. In my case, the only disabled service is SQLServer Active DirectoryHelper. This service can be set to manual, but it will not start, and just setting it to manual doesn't solve the problem. These posts also suggest that having the SQL Server program folder compressed can cause the error, but this is not applicable to my situation. I took a look at the Windows Update log and other than an error message with the return code 0x0000737d, I didn't see any useful information. I also looked at the hotfix installation log at C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Setup Bootstrap\LOG\Hotfix\SQL9_Hotfix_KB970892_sqlrun_sql.msp.log, and found the error message:"Error 29565. SQL Server Setup cannot upgrade the specified instance because the previous upgrade did not complete. Start the Remote Registry service and go to Add/Remove Programs, select the Change button for Microsoft SQL Server 2005, and then select SQL instance HPDSDB and complete the setup." The description of this security update at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970892,in the More Information section, lists four TechNet articles with troubleshooting procedures for known issues. Article 955250 seems like it may be applicable, although the error message doesn't match. I'm still trying to work through this. The security update is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0d878f4b-71e8-4170-9a14-1bce684811ce&displaylang=enfor anybody who does not wish to rely on Windows Update. Thanks for any additional thoughts that anyone may have.Solved6.4KViews4likes28Comments
BE 2012 and Data Domain w/ DDBoost
Background: So we have Backup Exec 2012 and two Data Domain DD620's. We have all the required licensing including the Data Domain DD Boost and replication licenses. I have installed the Open Storage Technology (OST) plugin 2.5.0.3 as suggested for the version of BE. Both DD boxes are visable and connected to my BE server. I have foud some documentation and a video that explains some of what I am looking for but not entirely and most of it is for BE2010. The BE 2012 documentation from DD is not up to date yet. I am trying to setup backups as my tape drive has had enough and is not working properly. Anyone I have talked to just says you backup to it, then I continue finding little things that need to be done. No verify, no precompression, some said no deduplication in the job, other said server side dedupe because DDBoost manages it with OST plugin. Too much information and not enough people knowing what to tell me. The DD weekend support guys don't know the software titles they just know the hardware. I need help now unfortunately... Question: What settings do I use for Backups? I have Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, and SQL agents.