Monday, April 22, 2013

Bypassing Symantec Backup Exec 2012 SharePoint backup

I am problem backing up my new SharePoint 2010 Farm using Symantec Backup Exec 2012 for the past few weeks and have been working Symantec support to resolve it.  The remote agent on the SQL Server crashes and the backup will fail.  The problem has yet to be resolved as Symantec Engineers are still analyzing the collected logs.

All my SharePoint and SQL servers are virtual machines running in VMware ESXi 5.1 and I thought of backing up the virtual machines for the time being but unfortunately ESXi 5.1 is still not supported by Backup Exec 2012 SP1 as described in http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/updated-quality-wins-every-time-vsphere-51-support.

So for the time being, I am backing up the SharePoint databases from the SQL Server.  However, when I tried to backup the databases in the SQL Server, Backup Exec is aware that SharePoint databases are hosted on the SQL Server.

Microsoft SharePoint Resources appears in the backup job properties.

01 Backup Properties

When I tried to edit the backup selection, I can see that the SharePoint databases are greyed off.

02 Backup Selections

If I continue with the backup, all the SharePoint databases will not be backup and I will see errors similar to the one below.

V-79-57344-33925 - Error: SharePoint_Config is a component of a SharePoint server farm. It must be backed up using the Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Select it for backup from the Microsoft Server SharePoint Server Farms node.

To workaround this, I have to rename (simulating a delete) two Backup Exec’s dll files in the SQL Server.  Before renaming the two dll files, the Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows needs to be stopped.

04 Stop Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows

The two dll files to be renames are bedssps2.dll and bedssps3.dll found in C:\Program Files\Symantec\Backup Exec\RAWS.

05 bedsspsx before rename

I renamed the two dll files by appending .old to the end of the files.

06 bedsspsx after rename

Restart the Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows.

07 Start Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows

Now the Microsoft SharePoint Resources does not show up in the backup job properties.

Backup Properties without SharePoint

The SharePoint databases are not greyed out anymore when I edit the backup selection.

09 Backup Selections without SharePoint

Anyway, I am hoping to get some good news from Symantec support soon so that I can start using the SharePoint Farm backup.

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