Exchange differential VSS backups and circular logging...

-
We've had an issue for a while where we had a third party put some of our databases into circular logging due to disk space issues.

They didn't following the Microsoft guidelines and restart the Information Store/dismount and mount.

Our backup solution, ArcServe was unable to complete differential backups of the databases in circular logging mode.  Obviously.  We were getting full backups it was just not ideal time wise.

When we disabled circular logging and dismounted the databases as per the Microsoft instructions within 3 minutes we got errors in the event log detailing that a log file was missing.  Consequently the differential backups failed due to VSS being unable to snapshot the database.

After talking with the third party and trying various methods.  We were left with little option other than to move the mailboxes from the database into a different database.  This was not ideal.

The third party then suggested we try taking a couple of full backups of the databases once they were out of circular logging.  We did this - to be honest we didn't think this would do anything as the logs were still missing.  After the second full backup we were able to change back to differentials and now all is well!

Who would have thought?!

In summary if you are getting VSS errors with your Exchange 2010 differential backups try running a couple of extra full backups one after the other and then retry those diffs!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PXE booting, MDT and 802.1x

-
Image
Oh dear. We implemented site wide 802.1x when we moved. This has caused numerous issues which we are still tracking down and killing with fire. Again "only-when-we-needed-it" struck as we had a new starter and need to build a machine. Ah.   No PXE.  However thankfully we were able to make a bootable USB using 802.1x and get our build working again from MDT in our 802.1 environment. Here's how we did it.   Caveats:  I'm assuming you know MDT and how PXE works. We use Computer certificates as the 8021x auth method. 802.1x is working in our environment GPO is used to start the wired 802.1x service on built machines. GPO is used to configure the network profile to use 802.1x What you need Get a USB stick to take your WinPE 4GB may be enough Make sure you are running an up to date working MDT installation! Create a machine certificate which has a long expiry date, you don't want to be making USB WinPE images every month!! Export the machine
Read more

Intune installation requires a wire...or does it?

-
If you are using Intune (great!) it assumes you have a wired connection (not great) - this is more of an issue as some machine now no longer have built in ethernet ports. It is possible to connect to your wireless - albeit in a slightly awkward way.....here's how During the OOBE hit SHIFT+F10 to get a command window and type either; start ms-settings: To get the settings window or start ms-availablenetworks: To see the network fly outs. Thanks to  Using a wireless network connection with Windows Autopilot white glove – Out of Office Hours (oofhours.com)
Read more

Security Policy 1001

-
We had an annoying warning showing every 5 minutes on our Read Only Domain Controllers.  This didn't affect service but meant we were losing our logs of important events (should the have occurred) "Security policy cannot be propagated. Security Configuration Server (in services.exe) is not ready. This is probably in system reboot. Policy will be tried again in the next propagation." Source: SceCli Event: ID 101 We tracked this down to a GPO which was populating the local Administrators group. Obviously a Domain Controller has no local users or groups so this was causing the issue. Ensuring that the GPO did not apply to the Domain Controllers - yes the GPO was linked at the root! fixed the issue. It is strange that we did not see the warnings on our main Domain Controllers only on the Read Only DC's as this would have affected all DCs the same (I would have thought)
Read more