Saturday, February 20, 2010

DPM 2010 the story so far..

On the technet DPM team blog Prashant Kumar (Program Manager | DPM Team) wrote a post with a lot of interesting background information on DPM 2010.
He describes how some of the new features in DPM 2010 help you to meet you business SLA’s.

  • Automatic rerun of failed jobs;
  • Automatic consistency checks;
  • Automatic grow of DPM volumes;
  • Automatic discovery of SharePoint and SQL databases;
  • SLA reports.

Post can be found here

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Dynamic Disk Hotfix

Quote from http://blogs.technet.com

A potential problem with Volume Manager on Windows Server 2008 systems may lead to data loss.

This hot fix is not DPM-specific.  However, because DPM servers do utilize dynamic disks, it is important to apply this hotfix on WS08-based DPM servers so that your backup-data is not lost from the DPM storage pool.

For more information please read the link below to the hot fix.

962975    Dynamic disks are marked as "Invalid" on a computer that is running Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista when you bring the disks online, take the disks offline, or restart the computer if Data Protection Manager is installed

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962975

This hot fix does not apply to Windows Server 2008 R2

Friday, February 12, 2010

DPM 2010 RC documentation

As you might have noticed there is no documentation on DPM 2010 included in the RC download.

Download the DPM 2010 RC

Mike of Scug.be  has done a good job in making screen-shots of the upgrade from DPM 2010 beta to DPM 2010 RC.

This might saves you from  some headaches.
http://scug.be/blogs/scdpm/archive/2010/02/10/dpm-2010-upgrade-from-beta-to-rc.aspx

Thursday, February 11, 2010

SharePoint 2007 recovery point fails after Password change

There are many reasons why a SharePoint recovery point keeps failing. It also a good idea to check the logs on the Web front-end and SQL backend server.

In our case we found the following errors in the system log of the SharePoint Web front-end
clip_image002

Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10004
Date: 10-2-2010
Time: 16:10:49
User: N/A
Computer: <server_name>
Description: DCOM got error "Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password. " and was unable to logon <account_name> in order to run the server:{

clip_image004

Event Type: Error
Event Source: DCOM
Event Category: None
Event ID: 10005
Date: 10-2-2010
Time: 18:14:55
User: N/A
Computer: <server_name>
Description:DCOM got error "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. " attempting to start the service vds with arguments "" in order to run the server:

Reason / Cause
In our case this error was caused by a Password change of the account we used (a long time ago) to configure SharePoint protection.

Solution
After you change the password of the account you used for the ConfigureSharePointProtection, you need to run the commands again on the SharePoint Web Front-end machines.

ConfigureSharePoint –EnableSharePointProtection
ConfigureSharePoint –EnableSPSearchProtection
All available commands: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd441708.aspx

Sharepoint 2007 Protection error

When you try to add a SharePoint farm to a DPM protection group you may get the error below.

The operation failed because an error occurred while enumerating the data source for Virtual SSP Writer.
Check to see that the data source specified in the error message is online and accessible.
ID: 921
Details: The system cannot find the path specified (0x8007003)

image

You will receive this error when trying to expand the SharePoint Front-end server.

Resolution \ Cause:
The might be caused by a missing MTATempStore$ share on your SharePoint frontend server. Check if the directory %program files\Data Protection Manager\Temp is shared as MTATempStore$. The default permission is Everyone full control. This can be changed as long as the account you used for configuring the WssCmdletsWrapper has access to the Share.
Now you can retry to add the SharePoint farm to the Protection group

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

DPM 2010 Storage Calculators

Storage is the most essential part of the hardware for Data protection Manager. In most cases you will use disk for your short term protection.

But how many disk space to you need?
To answer this question Microsoft has developed three Excel calculation sheets (still in draft) for: Exchange, SharePoint and Hyper-V

image image
Example 1: Hyper-V Calculation

image image image
Example 2: Exchange Protection

image image
Example 3: SharePoint protection

As you can see in the examples above, the sheets calculate more then only the required disk space. It also calculate the number of DPM servers required, hardware for DPM server needed. Configuration of the DPM server; like page file and Database size. You will also find an estimated backup and recovery time for your protected servers.

The sheets are available at the Microsoft download site: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=c136c66c-bd4a-4fb1-8088-f610cd02dc51

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Data Protection Manager 2010 Release Candidate – now available

Download the DPM 2010 RC

The RC version of DPM 2010 is now available for download – Lets get started

System State back-up fails – part x

The system state back-up fails on a Windows 2008 server with SQL 2005 installed.

The error message on the DPM server is a bit confusing

DPM failed to create the system state backup. If you are trying to create the system state of a Windows 2008 Server operating system, verify that the Windows Server Backup (WSB) is installed, and that there is enough free disk space on the protected server to store the system state. (ID 30214 Details: Internal error code: 0x809909FB)

There is enough free space available and the system state back-up worked before, this confirms that the Windows Server backup application is successful installed.

The first steps of troubleshooting are: kicking off the system state back-up locally on the protected server and checking the event log

Stating the system state backup locally should be done from the command line interface:
wbadmin start systemstatebackup -backuptarget:x
(x – should be replaced with the drive letter where you like to store the system state backup)

In our case this local back-up fails as well. Surprising is that; we did not select the SQL database to be included in the back-up but the application log is still full with SQL backup errors.

An overview of errors

Log Name: Application
Source: SQLinstance
Date: 5-2-2010 10:53:51
Event ID: 18210
Task Category: (2)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: SYSTEM
Computer: servername.domain.ad

Description:BackupMedium::Report Error: write failure on backup device '{18C03E39-BD81-4166-8BE1-230C4343980F}6'. Operating system error 995(error not found).

Application error 1

Log Name: Application
Source: SQLVDI
Date: 5-2-2010 10:53:51
Event ID: 1
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: servername.domain.ad

Description:SQLVDI: Loc=SVDS::CloseDevice. Desc=Abort detected. ErrorCode=(0). Process=3072. Thread=5916. Server. Instance=xxxxxxx. VD=Global\{18C03E39-BD81-4166-8BE1-230C4343980F}4_SQLVDIMemoryName_0.

Application error 2

Log Name: Application
Source: SQLWRITER
Date: 5-2-2010 10:53:51
Event ID: 24583
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: servername.domain.ad

Description:Sqllib error: OLEDB Error encountered calling ICommandText::Execute. hr = 0x80040e14. SQLSTATE: 42000, Native Error: 3013

Error state: 1, Severity: 16
Source: Microsoft SQL Native Client
Error message: BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
SQLSTATE: 42000, Native Error: 3202
Error state: 2, Severity: 16
Source: Microsoft SQL Native Client
Error message: Write on "{18C03E39-BD81-4166-8BE1-230C4343980F}2" failed: 995(error not found)

Application error 3

Log Name: Application
Source: SQLinstance
Date: 5-2-2010 10:53:51
Event ID: 3041
Task Category: (6)
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: SYSTEM
Computer: servername.domain.ad

Description: BACKUP failed to complete the command BACKUP DATABASE <DATABASENAME>. Check the backup application log for detailed messages.

Application error 4

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Backup
Date: 5-2-2010 10:53:55
Event ID: 521
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: SYSTEM
Computer: servername.domain.ad

Description:Backup started at '5-2-2010 9:52:41' failed as Volume Shadow copy operation failed for backup volumes with following error code '2155348129'. Please rerun backup once issue is resolved.

Application error 5

The errors in the application log indicate that there is an issue with the SQL databases which causes the SQL VSS-writer to fail during the system state back-up.

This can be confirmed by stopping the SQL services and try the system state backup again. Now the back-up is successful.

One of the SQL database is causing the SQL VSS-writer to fail. Application error 4 shows which database is causing the issue.

In our case we contacted the SQL application error, who did his magic. (I do not have the details).

After this the System state back-up is successful

Monday, February 8, 2010

DPM2010 RC is baked

News is spreading quickly

image 
Image from twitter.com

Is your VMware snapshot application consistent ??

When using Hyper-V (R2) as your virtualization solution it is likely that you will use DPM 2010 as your backup solution. When using DPM 2010 to protect the Hyper-V parent\host it is able to create consistent backups of application\database which are running inside the child machines. I will explain how this works in one of my next posts.

But which solution should you use for Vmware image backups and what are the pitfalls.
My colleague Marcel van den Berg  (UP2V ) writes about it on his blog post: Is your VMware snapshot application consistent ??
Maybe a bit off-topic here. But it never hurts to broaden your horizon

Also from his hand: Overview of image level backup solutions for VMware vSphere

Friday, February 5, 2010

TechNet Webcast: Monitoring, Backing Up, and Restoring Exchange Server 2010 with System Center (Level 300)

Microsoft System Center helps you get the most from your mission-critical messaging infrastructure with management solutions that enhance the availability features built into Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. In this webcast, we look at how System Center can improve the health and availability of your servers running Exchange with the Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2007 and Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007. System Center has application awareness built into its management solutions to help deliver guidance and best practices to Exchange administrators, ensuring service level agreements (SLAs) are met and saving organizations money.

Presenters: Leslie Kitz, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation and Jon LeCroy, Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation

Start Time:
Wednesday, March 03, 2010 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada)

Language(s):
English.

Product(s):
Microsoft System Center.

Audience(s):
IT Generalist.

Duration:
60 Minutes

Register here

Thanks to Marnix: http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/