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Windows Server TechCenter > Windows Server Forums > Backup – Windows and Windows Server > Windows Backup Server - Failed jobs

Answered Windows Backup Server - Failed jobs

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      Friday, December 03, 2010 5:59 PM
       
       
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      OS:  Windows Server 2008 Enterprise

      I have a daily job scheduled to backup C: and D:  to an external USB drive.

      Each day, I get a Successful message and a Failed message.

      The Failed message is:  Backup was not started.

      The operation failed because another operation was in progress.  Retry the operation.

      I have only one job scheduled to backup both disks.

      The Event viewer says:  Backup started at '12/2/2010 4:00:11 AM' failed as another backup or recovery is in progress. Please re-run backup

      I've tried deleting all jobs, reformatting the USB disk and rescheduling the job.

      The two "disks" are partitions on the underlying RAID array.  Could it be that it's trying to run two threads (for the two "disks") but is getting confused because it wants some sort of exclusive access but can't because they are partitions on the same RAID array?

      The machine has some Hyper-V virtual machines running on it.  I tried doing the steps outlined in MS KB 958622 to "register" the Hyper-V VSS writer, but nothing changed.  I've searched quite a bit and this was the closest thing I could come up with.

      The used space on the USB disk is about what I would expect for a successful backup, but it's hard to have faith and confidence that it's really backed up correctly with the daily error messages.  This is our most important source code.

      Any ideas?

      • Edited by ldillon59102 Friday, December 03, 2010 6:01 PM typo fix
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    Answers

    • Monday, December 13, 2010 3:33 PM
       
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      Good news:  The backup hasn't produced a Failure message is 5 days.

       

      In summary, the only changes were setting the job in the Task Manger to not run over 24 hours and to only allow one copy to run.

      I cannot be completely sure that this fixed the problem as the error message was intermittent to begin with.

       

      I cannot say that I have a "warm, fuzzy" feeling about the reliability, logging and scheduling capabilities of Windows Server Backup, but perhaps that's how Microsoft intended it.

      • Marked As Answer by ldillon59102 Monday, December 13, 2010 3:33 PM
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    • Monday, December 06, 2010 7:05 PM
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      Windows Server Backup processes volumes sequentially. Separate threads are not spawned for volumes in a backup.

      Any Backup/Recovery operation that is in progress when a backup is triggered will cause this error.

      I suspect that time taken by every backup on your machine is longer than the interval between 2 consecutive backups. Please check the start/end times of backups in the WSB UI to see if the failed backup is triggered while the previous backup has still not ended.

       
    • Monday, December 06, 2010 7:54 PM
       
       
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      Thank you for your reply,

      There is only one backup job scheduled... at 9PM each day as "automagically" created by the wizard.  I'm sorry if I didn't make this point clear.  I agree that the symptom sounds like two jobs are trying to run.  The one job is supposed to get both C: and D: drives.

      The Failure message is from 9PM, which is the same time that the single backup job is scheduled.  The job seems to take 8 hours and 41 min.  I wish the logging in the GUI was a little clearer.

      Is there a way to view the scheduled jobs from the wbadmin command-line utility? I'd like to see if it agrees with what the GUI says.

      • Edited by ldillon59102 Monday, December 06, 2010 8:17 PM clarification
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    • Tuesday, December 07, 2010 7:11 AM
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      In the UI (wbadmin.msc), you will find a section which has a list of backup status messages. Double clicking any entry in that list will open a window which displays the start and end time of that run.

       
    • Tuesday, December 07, 2010 5:56 PM
       
       
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      Sankalp,

        Yes, that's were I got the log messages in the original post.  "The operation failed because another operation was in progress.  Retry the operation."

       

       

       
    • Wednesday, December 08, 2010 7:31 AM
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      1. Run "wbadmin enable backup" and check the the last line of output - "Times of day to run backup:" 

      2. Check the task scheduler to see if somehow a faulty trigger was set for the backup task at the same time? The backup task is located at Task Scheduler Library\Microsoft\Windows\Backup in the Task Scheduler UI.

      If these indicate only one time, then I suspect there is some script/task, other thank the one created by Windows Server Backup itself, trying to run a backup at the same time. Can you check?

      This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
       
    • Wednesday, December 08, 2010 10:08 PM
       
       
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      1.  C:\Users\Administrator.TECH-TIME>wbadmin enable backup

      wbadmin 1.0 - Backup command-line tool

      (C) Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corp.

       

      The scheduled backup settings:

      Volumes in backup: W2K8 ES(C:),Storage & Misc(D:)

      Location to store backup: WD 10EAVS External USB Device

      Times of day to run backup: 21:00

       

      C:\Users\Administrator.TECH-TIME>

       

      2.  The only thing I see in the Task Scheduler under Backup is the 9PM backup job from Windows Backup Server.

      The only other backup-like job we have is a once a week 7zip job that starts at 10AM Sunday and finishes by 2PM. 

      I made two changes under the Settings tab:

      Stop the task is it runs longer than [3] days  -- changed to [1] day (no point in a daily job running over 24 hours)

      If the task is already running, then the following rule applies:  Do not start a new instance.

       

      I also looked in the History tab and it only shows Informational messages -- no errors.

       

      More info:  the main backup job ran without errors on the 5th and the 6th (Sunday and Monday) but Failed again on Tuesday.  No configuration changes were made to anything during this time.

       

      Is there a way to verify the integrity of the backups short of doing full a restore?  I'm having a hard time trusting the Successful messages.

       

       

       
    • Thursday, December 09, 2010 6:49 AM
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      To check the integrity of backup, here's what you can do:

      1. Go to the backup target and find the directory called WindowsImageBackup\<Source Machine Name>

      2. Inside this directory, there will be directory with the name of format "Backup <Time Stamp>"

      3. In this directory, there should be a VHD file for each volume included in backup which contains the latest versions for that volume.

      You can mount those VHDs and check if the data is as expected.

      Can you copy-paste the start and end times of the backups that ran on Sunday and Monday from the UI?

       

      Thanks,

      Sankalp

      This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights
       
    • Thursday, December 09, 2010 3:19 PM
       
       
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      Unfortunately, one cannot copy and past from the UI.

      But here are the Start and End times:

       

      Start Time:  12/5/2010 9:00 PM

      End Time:  12/6/2010 5:41 AM

       

      Start Time:  12/6/2010 9:00 PM

      End Time:  12/7/2010 3:54 AM

       

       
    • Monday, December 13, 2010 3:33 PM
       
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      Good news:  The backup hasn't produced a Failure message is 5 days.

       

      In summary, the only changes were setting the job in the Task Manger to not run over 24 hours and to only allow one copy to run.

      I cannot be completely sure that this fixed the problem as the error message was intermittent to begin with.

       

      I cannot say that I have a "warm, fuzzy" feeling about the reliability, logging and scheduling capabilities of Windows Server Backup, but perhaps that's how Microsoft intended it.

      • Marked As Answer by ldillon59102 Monday, December 13, 2010 3:33 PM
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    • Thursday, January 06, 2011 7:06 PM
       
       
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      I'm seeing this same issue on a SBS 2008 server but what's odd is it is saying the conflicting backup job is from the future.

      The event log entry at 1/5/2011 : 11:01PM is:

      Backup started at '1/6/2011 5:00:01 AM' failed as another backup or recovery is in progress. Please re-run backup.

       

      The SBS backup is scheduled to run at 11PM.  And at 11:01PM the above entry is logged in the event log 4 times.  Each time it claims there is a job 6 hours in the future that is in progress.  There is then a 5th entry about 15 minutes later where the 11pm backup is logged as running successfully.  But obviously something is not right.

       

      There SBS backup is schedule to be run only once each day at 11pm in the Wizard

       

      Any ideas?

       
    • Friday, June 10, 2011 4:57 PM
       
       
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      I am seeing the same issue on an SBS 2008 server.  I have a single backup job scheduled daily at 7pm and it usually runs in 4 hours.  I have 5 USB drives that we rotate. 

       

      In the Windows Server Backup console on 6/3/11 I started getting 2 failed jobs each at 7pm to Disk 2 then a successful job at 7pm to Disk X (drive plugged in that day, not Disk 2).  The errors on the failed jobs sate another operation was in process.  In the event viewer it logs the following error twice –

       

      Event ID 518 6/8/11 7:00:07 pm

      Backup started at 6/9/2011 1:00:07 AM failed as another backup or recovery is in progress.

       

      Last night Disk 2 was connected and I had the same chain of events.  The failed jobs in the Windows Server Backup console are always on Disk 2.  I have been through the scheduled tasks and only see the one backup scheduled for 7pm.  The history of the task only shows the activity of the job and it completing, but no errors or failures.

       

      Any help would be appreciated. 

       
    • Thursday, September 08, 2011 2:40 PM
       
       
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      Hi,

      I am having a similar problem to the above and the original poster. I get an error 4 times before a success, with each of the errors reporting a failure an hour before the actual schedule is supposed to trigger the backup.

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      (C) Copyright 2004 Microsoft Corp.

       

      The scheduled backup settings:

       

      Volumes in backup: Local Disk(C:),Data(D:)

      Location to store backup: WDC WD20 EARS-00MVWB0 USB Device

      Times of day to run backup: 00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00

      ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

       

      We back up to an external drive four times a day incrementally. In the Backup History window from the SBS Console, before each green successful entry there are four red failed entries at exactly the same time.

       

      It feels like these are ghosts of failed jobs from the past which never got cancelled and keep retrying. Thats probably a layman's point of view though! I have changed the schedule settings to allow only one job at once and to cancel the job after 4 hours (they usually only take around 20 minutes).

       

       

       

      Anyone managed to fix a problem like this?

       
    • Tuesday, September 20, 2011 7:59 AM
       
       
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      Have had exactly this for just 1 week now. One other point I noted in the history of the task was that it did indeed try to trigger the backup 3 times (ID 107). Could this be related to the tick box  that allows the task to run as soon as possible if the time is missed? I have unticked this as well as stopping after 8 hours and not starting another thread if one is in progress. I will see how it goes to day at 12.30pm.
       
    • Sunday, October 02, 2011 9:22 PM
       
       
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      I've also been having this on sbs 2008 server, started last month.  SBS backup util settings seem ok, task scheduler settings seem ok, windows backup settings seem ok.

      I'm going to try setting the job to cancel after 4 hours and "do not start a new instance" if the task is already running.

      Did anyone find a resolution?

      Thanks in advance!

      John

       
    • Saturday, November 19, 2011 7:18 PM
       
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      Thanks ldillon59102. Manual modification of the task worked for me too. Didn't even have to change the max duration--preventing multiple parallel instances was enough.

      Blogged here with screen shots and instructions:

      http://www.mcbsys.com/techblog/2011/11/sbs-2008-attempts-multiple-simultaneous-backups/

      Mark Berry
      MCB Systems


      • Proposed As Answer by mcbsys Saturday, November 19, 2011 7:18 PM
      • Edited by mcbsys Saturday, November 19, 2011 7:20 PM
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