SQL Backup 5.2   

Troubleshooting

 See Also

This topic provides some information to help you to understand problems that may arise when you are using SQL Backup. For information about error codes, refer to Errors.

SQL Backup does not run

This could be because:

  1. your permissions have not been set up correctly

    For details of the SQL Backup security model, see Security Model

  2. your database SQL Server instance is not running

    Ensure that you have started the Microsoft SQL Server services. If you do not have a default instance and you use named instances instead, ensure that you have set the -I command line parameter to the named instance.

SQL Server doesn't exist or access is denied

SQL Backup cannot connect to the SQL Server. Try the following to rectify the problem:

  1. Verify that the SQL Server is online and that the SQL Server name is listed in your LAN by pinging the address.

    For example, open a command prompt and run the following command:

    ping <ServerName>

    where ServerName is the name of your SQL Server.

  2. If the SQL Server is online, verify that you are connecting to the correct port.

    If your SQL Server is not running on the default port (1433), type the following in the SQL Server Name box:

    <ServerName\Instance>,<Port>

    where ServerName\Instance is the name of your SQL Server and instance, and Port is the number of the port on which your SQL Server is running. For the default instance, use:

    <ServerName>,<Port>

  3. If you are sure that you are connecting to the correct port, force SQL Backup to use the TCP network protocol when it makes the connection by setting the Connection Properties for the SQL Server.

SQL Server cannot write to network share

The startup user for the SQL Backup Agent Service must have Full permissions on the network share address. For details about setting up permissions to use a network share, see Security Model, and Using SQL Backup to back up to a network share) which is available as a pdf download from the Red Gate Support Web site.

You may experience problems when you back up to network shares if your SQL Server is unable to write large data blocks (over 4 MB) to the network share. You can use the MAXDATABLOCK keyword with the BACKUP command to limit the data block size.

Reading backup file header is slow

By default, backup files created using SQL Backup are compressed. Therefore, when you use SQL Server to access a backup created by SQL Backup to read its header, the entire file must be uncompressed, which is time-consuming.

To avoid this, use the RESTORE SQBHEADERONLY command provided with SQL Backup whenever you need to view the header information.

If you do not want to compress your backup files:

SQL Backup doesn't delete files when ERASEFILES/ERASEFILES_ATSTART specified

If SQL Backup cannot list the contents of the folder that contains the files to be deleted, it cannot delete the files. Ensure that the user account from which you are running SQL Backup has permissions to list the folder contents.

Activity information does not refresh for version 4 servers

If you have registered SQL Servers that have SQL Backup version 4 server components installed, SQL Backup retrieves the details of activities and jobs on these SQL Servers when you first start SQL Backup. The activity information is displayed in the time line, the activity history, and the Jobs tab. However, this information cannot be refreshed while SQL Backup is running.

To ensure the information is always up-to-date, upgrade the server components to version 5. For details, see Installing and Upgrading SQL Backup.

SQL Backup version 3 restore script does not work

In SQL Backup version 5, you cannot restore backups using the encrypted form of passwords:

RESTORE DATABASE database FROM DISK='filename WITH PASSWORD = '<ENCRYPTEDPASSWORD>encryption</ENCRYPTEDPASSWORD>'

This is to prevent unauthorized users from restoring backups if they have access to the encrypted password, but not the unencrypted password. Therefore, if you have a SQL Backup version 3 restore script that uses an encrypted password, it will no longer work; you must specify the password in unencrypted form:

RESTORE DATABASE database FROM DISK='filename' WITH PASSWORD = 'Password'

 

 

 

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