risual support blog

I recently came across an issue on customer site where backup to tape jobs were failing because the tapes inserted were showing up in the DPM console as “Suspect Tape”. The reason for this is actually to do with the way DPM identifies the tapes.

A suspect tape is when a tape or tapes have conflicting identification information. If your tape library has a barcode scanner then check that no two tapes have the same barcode if they do you will need to assign one of the tapes a different barcode. Also there can be conflictions with the on-media identifier (OMID) which is written to the start of each tape and is read before using the tape.

To resolve this issue of conflicting OMID’s firstly remove the suspect tapes from the library, then rescan and inventory the library. After this we need to run the ResolveSuspectMedia.cmd script. This can usually be found in %SystemDrive%\program files\Microsoft DPM\DPM\bin, if not you can enter the following in a text editor and save as ResolveSuspectMedia.cmd:

osql -E -S localhost\MS$DPM2007$ -d DPMDB -Q "UPDATE tbl_MM_ArchiveMedia SET IsSuspect = 0"

Finally enter the tapes back into the library and inventory and hey presto you should now be able to use the tapes to perform successful tape backups!

To delete a DPM agent which is showing in the DPM Console , you simply right click the agent in question and press uninstall.

Now press uninstall agents at the next window.

You’ll now have a Credential box, so just type your domain credentials and then the task will start to perform and will complete successfully and delete.

If you want a delete an Agent of a server that no longer exists, follow the above steps and you will get the following message.

Simply press yes and this will remove the agent from your console.

Hope this helps

Daniel Davies

Sometimes when you are troubleshooting DPM or monitoring , such as tape backups you would like to look for that specific job that is running or has ran and failed without having to sort through all other jobs that are running such as consistency checks and recovery points.

This can be done by creating a filter on in the jobs tab under monitoring.

To create a filter first press “create filter” on the right hand section of the DPM console. For this example we will be creating a filter to view all tape backups that have taken place.

Now name your filter, I’ve named mine tape backups. Now select the job you would like to monitor, in my case it will be tape backup,and save this.

  You will now have your own view of a specific DPM Job

Thank You

Daniel Davies

You may come across a few problems when using DPM or Simply just windows backup when trying to back up “System State” on WINDOWS 2008.

The first problem you may come across if you have a single drive is that System State will not backup to a critical volume by default. So you have to set the below registry key to allow this to happen.

“Registry entry to enable system state backups to critical volumes

To enable the system state backup files to be targeted to critical volumes, you must set the value of the AllowSSBToAnyVolume registry entry under the following registry subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\wbengine\SystemStateBackup\

Set the value of this entry as follows:

Name: AllowSSBToAnyVolume
Data type: DWORD
Value data: 1

Note When this value is set to 1, system state backups to any volume are enabled. To revert to the default behavior, set the value to 0.”

You may have the issue we had recently also where the  above  regkey is already set to 1, windows backup was installed and there was enough free space, so no obvious reason why the backup should have failed.

But you will notice the below event errors at the same point the backup fails.

“EVENT ID 517

Backup started at ’02/12/2009 09:25:29′ failed with following error code ’2155348165′ ( There was a failure in preparing the backup image of one of the volumes in the backup set. ). Please rerun backup once issue is resolved.

EVENT ID 5193

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: Unexpected error calling routine ConvertStringSidToSid.  hr = 0×80070539.

Operation:
   OnIdentify event
   Gathering Writer Data

Context:
   Execution Context: Shadow Copy Optimization Writer
   Writer Class Id: {4dc3bdd4-ab48-4d07-adb0-3bee2926fd7f}
   Writer Name: Shadow Copy Optimization Writer
   Writer Instance ID: {06ff818a-6da7-4d9c-920b-df9c6309748e}”

Fix

To fix this we had to do the following

1. Create a backup of the registry

2. Delete the following key HKLM\Software\Microsoft\EventSystem\{26c409cc-ae86-11d1-b616-00805fc79216}\Subscriptions (leave the EventClass subkey)

3. Restart the server.

4. Run the “VSSADMIN LIST WRITERS” from command Prompt. This causes the regkeys to be recreated and rebuilds the VSS writers.

After this all started working.

Daniel Davies

You may come across an issue when trying to backup a Windows 2008 System State, where the backup keeps failing with a 30214 error.

“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).”

This issue occurs because Windows Server backup needs to be installed on the Windows 2008 server for you to be able to perform a system state backup.

 Installing Windows Server Backup

1, Open Server Manager and press features.

2, Now go to add features

3, Finally select the following features and install them.

Now your System State backup should complete successfully.

I came across this issue while trying to perform a consistency check on a Windows Server 2008’s system state. You will see the below alerts in the DPM Console.

“The replica of System State Computer\SystemState on is inconsistent with the protected data source. All protection activities for data source will fail until the replica is synchronized with consistency check. You can recover data from existing recovery points, but new recovery points cannot be created until the replica is consistent (ID 3106).

“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).”

The reason we need space on the machine that is getting backed up, is because DPM creates the system state file on the local machine and then backs up the file it created.

If you only have one drive on the protected server then your only option is to clear down space on the drive. However if you have an additional drive, then we can make the System State file  be created on another drive which has enough free space.

To do this follow the below steps.

To change the location of the system state backup file

1. On the protected computer, open PSDatasourceConfig.xml in Notepad. (File located in “<Drive Letter>:\Program Files\Microsoft Data Protection Manager\DPM\Datasources”.
2. Change the <FilesToProtect> value from %systemdrive% to the desired location.
3. Save the file.
4. On the DPM server, if there is a protection group protecting the system state of the protected computer in step 1, run a consistency check.
5. The consistency check will fail and generate an alert. Perform the recommended actions in the alert as follows:
   1. In the alert details, click the Modify protection group link, and then step through the wizard. This may fail again but continue to the next step.
   2. Perform a consistency check.

Then create a recovery point to disk and then it should start to synchronize.

Daniel Davies