Dec 11, 2009

Getting Backup Exec To Work with Windows Server 2008 R2

If you read yesterday’s article you know I am working to get the kinks out of our Backup Exec deployment. My goal is to have a smooth, self sufficient backup server running, that I only need to look at when an alert tells me something is wrong rather than daily. I know daily checks are a good thing, but I would rather stare at a bunch of successes than failures.

One of the errors I was seeing was on our Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. In fact, when you install the agent you get a warning about compatibility problems. Does that mean Backup Exec won’t back up Windows Server 2008 R2? Not in this case.

The error I was seeing was this:

V-79-57344-65225 - A failure occurred accessing the Writer metadata.

V-79-57344-65225 - AOFO: Initialization failure on: "System?State". Advanced Open File Option used: Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).

Snapshot provider error (0xE000FEC9): A failure occurred accessing the Writer metadata.

Check the Windows Event Viewer for details.

At first I thought that maybe it was related to the VSS issues I blogged about a few months ago. It wasn’t related at all as the writer status was fine. No the problem is with the 100MB System Reserved partition windows creates when you install it.

To get the error to go away all you have to do is assign that partition a drive letter:

drive letter system reservedI know! So simple it almost makes you want to puke right? What? Am I the only one? Okay, sorry then. Still, it is pretty awesome how easy it is to fix that.

Know of any other 2008 R2 tricks for backup exec? Hit me up in the comments!

 



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