Troubleshooting a failed backup

If a client backup fails, you can obtain information in the Operations Center to help diagnose and resolve the problem.

1. On the Clients page of the Operations Center, review the At Risk column and the Last Access column for information about why and when a client backup failed.
2. In the row corresponding to the client whose backup failed, take note of the client name in the Name column.
3. Click the name of the server in the Server column.
4. On the server Summary page, click the Completed Tasks tab.
   The Completed Tasks page displays information about server processes and client sessions that completed or failed in the past 24 hours.

   Tip: To view information about processes and sessions that completed or failed over 24 hours ago, you can issue the Select command as in the following example:

   select * from summary_extended where end_time<'2013-08-21 00:00:00'

   This example returns information about processes and sessions that completed or failed before the indicated time and date.
5. Display rows that are related to the client whose backup failed, by completing the following steps:
   1. Click the Advanced filter icon .
   2. Search for Name = the client name that you noted in step 2.
6. Select each row in turn and, in the Activity Log pane, search the related server messages for information about why a backup failed.
   Tips:

   • The start times of client sessions can help you to identify which row of the filtered table corresponds to the failed backup.
   • If the Activity Log pane is minimized, display it by double-clicking the Activity Log bar. You can resize the Activity Log pane by clicking and dragging the Activity Log bar. You can hide the Activity Log pane by double-clicking the Activity Log bar.
   • To view more server messages than can fit in the activity log in the Operations Center, or to view server messages from over 24 hours ago, issue the following command:

     query actlog search="client_name" 

     where client_name represents the name of the client whose backup failed.
   • To obtain more information about a server message, hover over the message number in the Activity Log pane.
7. Review client log messages from around the time of the server messages. To review client log messages, see the information about diagnosing client errors in the "Related tasks" section, later on this page.