Windows Server Backup Problems

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I've got a bit of a problem here that I have inherited. Currently, I have two Windows 2012 servers running.

  • One server is a production server with 1 Hyper-V VM on it that has SBS 2008 on the guest VM.
  • The other server is a standby server just in case the other server goes down, we can restore the production server to the stand by server.

On the production server:

There are 3 disks with two drives C: and D: on separate disks and a third disk that has an unformatted disk.

Windows Server Backup has been backing up to the standby server via UNC path. The backup gets stored put on a physical drive and then every night gets copied to an external drive to have a weeks worth of backups.

We had an issue a couple of days ago that an employee had deleted some info from a spreadsheet that we needed to recover. I went into Windows Server Backup and noticed that I could only recover the previous days backup from the calendar. Unfortunately, every time I try to view the files, restore vms or anything like that, it says that windows backup cannot find the backup set media.

Ever since I tried to recover the files, the backups are now failing. I am getting this error: 

The backup operation that started at
'‎2015‎-‎11‎-‎04T03:00:03.384015500Z' has failed with following error
code '0x8078014B' (There was a failure in creating a directory on the
backup storage location.). Please review the event details for a
solution, and then rerun the backup operation once the issue is
resolved.

I saw a couple of posts that say that it was a permissions issue but the directory permissions are set to everyone. So, I don't think it is that.

What can we do to fix this and what can we do to make the process better?

Best Regards, Edward Rhoades II

windows
windows-server-2012
hyper-v
windows-sbs-2008
windows-server-backup
asked on Server Fault Nov 4, 2015 by Edward Rhoades • edited Nov 5, 2015 by bentek

2 Answers

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http://blogs.technet.com/b/filecab/archive/2009/04/13/customizing-windows-server-backup-schedule.aspx

"You can use a network location (i.e. \servername\foldername) as a backup target in above commands. However, network backups will save only the latest version of the backup, deleting the previous version, as multiple versions on the network share are not supported."

answered on Server Fault Nov 4, 2015 by Greg Askew
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We had the same problems and solved them this way:

  1. The Daily backups are done using Image for Windows;
    it costs about $39(!) per Server, works perfectly with Servers, support incremental backups and supports bare metal restore, too. (disclaimer: we're just happy users)
    The GUI allows to create a command-line, which we copied to scheduled task.
    We also use their script IFWRotate which allows automatic deletion of old backups.
    Additionally, they answer customers questions :-)
  2. We allow users to restore their lost files itself by using Windows the built in function ShadowCopyVolume. We created a scheduled task on the server which hosts the files:
    Command line: C:\Windows\system32\vssadmin.exe
    Arguments: Create Shadow /AutoRetry=15 /For=\?\Volume{ecd8b3c1-e9e2-4af3-8ed0-d0749656bd59}\
    Start in: %systemroot%\system32
    Trigger: Every Day at 07:00 and at 12:00

Solution 2 creates two volume snapshots each day. Users can open the folder / file property dialog and select the "Previous Versions" register and then browse and restore the backed up files.

Kind regards, Tom

answered on Server Fault Nov 5, 2015 by Tom

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