Troubleshooting General Protection Issues

  • Article

Published : September 27, 2005

Table 6.3 provides troubleshooting guidance on protection issues. It supplements DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=46350) and the “Planning Data Protection” chapter in the DPM 2006 Planning and Deployment Guide (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=46356).

Table 6.3   Protection Issues

Issue

Details

DPM is no longer able to communicate with its protected file servers.

The DPM computer may have been temporarily disjoined from the Active Directory domain to which it previously belonged. For example, the DPM computer could have been disjoined because of a broken workstation-domain trust relationship. When the DPM computer is restarted, it is rejoined to the domain with the same name but is assigned a new Security Identifier (SID). All file servers that are being protected by this DPM computer have an agent registry DCOM security setting that contains the obsolete SID. Therefore, the file servers are unable to either launch the DPM File Agent or resume communication with the DPM computer.

To restore communication and resume data protection activities:

  1. Uninstall the File Agent from the file server locally.

  2. On the DPM server, open DPM Administrator Console, click the Management task area, click the Agents tab, select the file server, and then on the Actions pane, click Refresh information.

    The agent status changes to Error.

  3. In the Details section, click Remove the record of the server from this DPM computer.

  4. Reinstall the file agent on the file server. For instructions, see “Managing agents” in DPM Help (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=51976).

You install the file agent on a file server, and then run the New Protection Group wizard, but cannot access any shares or volumes on the file server.

When you install a file agent, after the file server restarts and is responsive to the ping command, it can take up to 20 minutes for the file agent to be ready to respond to requests from the New Protection Group wizard. You can wait 20 minutes after the file server restarts and then run the New Protection Group wizard again, or try the following procedure:

  1. Open DPM Administrator Console to the Management task area.

  2. Click the Agents tab, and then click Refresh information in the Actions pane until the agent status changes to OK.

Consistency check seems to transfer data much more slowly than replica creation.

A consistency check performs file-by-file verification to ensure that all the data on the replica is consistent with the protected data and it transfers any data that is different to the replica. However, the progress indicator during the consistency check displays only the amount of data transferred. Because only changed data is transferred, you cannot determine the speed of the consistency check by using the progress indicator.

Shadow copy time is not consistent with synchronization time.

When a shadow copy is created, it reflects the time of the most recent change to the protected volume.

Example: You schedule a shadow copy to be created at 11:00 A.M. The most recent change to the protected volume occurred at 8:30 A.M. The shadow copy that was created at 11:00 A.M. will display a time stamp of 8:30 A.M.

Synchronization fails with error 42:

DPM failed to communicate with DPM File Agent on the specified server because access is denied.

In addition to the possible causes listed in the error message, this error can also occur when

  • The agent is uninstalled locally from a file server running Windows Server 2003 SP1.

  • A file server that is running Windows 2000 Server is upgraded to Windows Server 2003 SP1.

Synchronization jobs fail and the details in the application event log include: “Unable to connect to Active Directory.”

Try the following:

  • Retry the job

  • Check for network connectivity between the DPM server and the domain controller

  • Verify that DPM is a member of the domain and that the domain controller is running

  • Verify that the DPM server has access rights to update Active Directory:

    1. Open the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in and verify that Advanced Features is selected in the View menu.

    2. Expand the domain, and then expand System.

    3. Right-click MS-ShareMapConfiguration, and then click Properties.

  • On the Security tab, verify that the DPM server name is listed.

Auto discovery does not discover changes to shares.

If a share on a file server is protected and the file server also contains an unsupported share, then auto discovery will fail to discover changes to shares on that file server, such as new shares, removed shares, and share remappings.

No “pending members” will be discovered by auto discovery for a file server with a protected share if the file server also contains a share that points to a destination in the following list of unsupported shares:

  • FAT volume

  • CD-ROM drive

  • USB drive

  • Mount point located inside another mount point

  • Special folders: System Volume Information folder, RECYCLER folder

  • Unsupported reparse point (that is, any reparse point other than a mount point)

  • On a case-sensitive system, a folder that has the same name as another folder inside that folder’s parent, differing only in case (for example, “F:\MarketingDocs” and “F:\marketingdocs”)

  • On a file server containing a share from the list of unsupported shares, you should protect only volumes and folders for auto discovery to work correctly.

After you upgrade a file server from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003 SP1, consistency checks for the protected volumes on the file server fail repeatedly.

In some instances, after an upgrade from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003 SP1, volumes on the server are assigned new GUIDs. When this occurs, the volume is discovered by auto discovery because of the new GUID, even though it is already protected. In addition, the replica for the protected volume is marked inconsistent and consistency checks for that replica fail repeatedly.

To resolve this issue, in DPM Administrator Console, uninstall the file agent from the file server, and then reinstall the file agent. This requires a restart of the file server.