What to do if your SnapManager backup fails

If your SnapManager backup fails, check the backup report for details about what SnapManager was trying to do when the failure occurred. You can also review the following list of common backup failures:

Backups during cluster failovers

If a Windows cluster move group or a storage system cluster failover occurs during a SnapManager backup, the backup fails, and you need to restart the backup after the move group or failover is complete.

Snapshot limit reached

If any of the volumes containing the LUNs being backed up reach the Snapshot copy limit of 255, whether those Snapshot copies were created by SnapManager or not, SnapManager backup fails. For more information about the Snapshot copy limit, see Maximum number of Snapshot copies you can retain.

Note
Automatic backup deletion is performed only after a successful backup is complete. Therefore, you must be able to create new Snapshot copies before you begin a new backup procedure.

SnapInfo directory being accessed

Because a SnapManager backup might include renaming a SnapInfo subdirectory and Windows does not allow a directory name to be changed while it is being accessed, accessing the SnapInfo directory with a tool like Windows Explorer could cause the backup to fail. Make sure that you do not hold any exclusive access to the SnapInfo directory on the Exchange host when a backup is performed.

SnapInfo directory out of space

Expand the LUN that contains the SnapInfo directory.

Note
When you expand a LUN, make sure that sufficient space remains in the volume for Snapshot copy creation, so that SnapManager can continue to function correctly. For more information about volume sizing, see Calculating volume size.

Data does not match

You made changes to your Exchange data store since SnapManager was started. You can refresh your view by pressing F5, or you can restart SnapManager.

Busy Snapshot copy

If you initiate a backup when a LUN backed by Snapshot copy exists, the result is a Snapshot copy that cannot be deleted; when you try, you get a "busy Snapshot copy" error and Event 249 is logged by SnapDrive in the event log. This can cause SnapManager backups to fail.

For information about recovering from this error, see Problem deleting backups due to busy Snapshot copy error.

Snapshot already exists

Either of the following circumstances might cause this error to occur:

The system clock on the host running SnapManager might not be synchronized with the clock on the storage system. These two clocks must be synchronized in order for SnapDrive to function correctly.
If a SnapMirror replication is running when you attempt to initiate a SnapManager backup, the backup can fail. You can avoid this problem by making sure that any SnapMirror replications have enough time to complete before you initiate another SnapManager backup.

Out of disk space

This error occurs when an out-of-disk-space condition occurs on a storage system volume that stores an Exchange database or transaction log. If this occurs, resize the volume or expand the LUN.

SnapManager server initialization failed

Either of the following circumstances might cause this error to occur:

You have exited the SnapManager application, but SnapManager.exe or smesrvr.exe processes are still running. To correct this problem, terminate any orphaned SnapManager processes.
The permissions associated with the SnapManager server account, or the server account itself, have been changed. In this case, SnapManager might not function correctly.