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Avamar - backup exceptions for excluded volumes
I am noticing that sometimes the Avamar backup job logs an exception for volumes that are excluded from backups. For example, by default we have the A:\ volume excluded from all backups, yet I occasionally receive exception notifications with the following error in the log:
2014-02-17 01:16:43 avtar Error <0000>: Unable to retrieve volume information for 'A:\' (Code: 0x57 code 87: The parameter is incorrect)
Why does this error occur, and should it even be appearing for volumes that we've excluded?
J_H_
498 Posts
0
February 17th, 2014 13:00
is the backup for physical drives or the VSS backup?
mmusser
20 Posts
0
February 17th, 2014 13:00
Hello - I'm seeing this for virtual machines that are being backed up through the Avamar agent.
pleone
6 Posts
0
March 17th, 2014 03:00
Hallo I have the same error on two servers:
Unable to retrieve volume information for 'E:\' (Code: 0x57 code 87: The parameter is incorrect)
But as far as I know on this server was never mounted a E: network or physical disk.
Thanks, Pietro.
J_H_
498 Posts
0
March 17th, 2014 14:00
again is the backup for the server or the VSS,
if you have your policy setup correctly any windows server with Avamar installed will get 2 backups.
one for the physical server and one for VSS.
Depending on how you have your backup setup, your exclude may only be applied to the physical backup and not the vss backup.
in activity monitor look a the good and the bad backup - go look at the Plug in column.
ionthegeek
2K Posts
1
March 17th, 2014 15:00
We recently had a couple of escalations come through for this issue (Unable to retrieve volume information for 'A:\'). In both these cases, the systems were virtual machines where there was a floppy drive configured in the machine but no floppy drive or floppy image available. Removing the floppy drive from the VM resolved these issues.
Druehl1
223 Posts
0
March 21st, 2014 01:00
Hi Ian,
I have the same problem on some physical servers which have a sort of removable device.
2014-03-19 20:11:47 avtar Error <0000>: Unable to retrieve volume information for 'Y:\' (Code: 0x57 code 87: Falscher Parameter)
2014-03-19 20:11:47 avtar Info <7324>: Volume Type for "Y:\" is "", Supports Compression=0, Encryption=0, ACLS=0, DataStreams=0, Reparse=0, Sparse=0, Hardlinks=0
2014-03-19 20:11:47 avtar Info <7324>: Volume Type for "Z:\" is "", Supports Compression=0, Encryption=0, ACLS=0, DataStreams=0, Reparse=0, Sparse=0, Hardlinks=0
2014-03-19 20:11:47 avtar Info <5811>: - Traversing drive 'C:' kind 'Local Fixed Disk'
2014-03-19 20:11:47 avtar Info <5811>: - Traversing drive 'D:' kind 'Local Fixed Disk'
2014-03-19 20:11:48 avtar Info <5811>: - Traversing drive 'E:' kind 'Local Fixed Disk'
2014-03-19 20:11:48 avtar Info <5810>: - Not traversing drive 'X:' kind 'CDROM'
2014-03-19 20:11:48 avtar Info <5810>: - Not traversing drive 'Y:' kind 'Removable'
2014-03-19 20:11:48 avtar Info <5810>: - Not traversing drive 'Z:' kind 'CDROM'
I removed the setting "Backup Natively Attached Virtual Hard Disks" in the dataset options, but this didn´t help.
Is there any workaround for this issue?
ionthegeek
2K Posts
0
March 21st, 2014 06:00
I haven't seen this on physical machines before. I would recommend opening a service request.
oomaar12
1 Message
0
March 27th, 2014 12:00
I have exactly the same with excluding C and D when I didn't excluded ....please any help I appreciated;
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <6074>: VSS snapshot set creation successful
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <7324>: Volume Type for "\" is "NTFS", Supports Compression=1, Encryption=1, ACLS=1, DataStreams=1, Reparse=1, Sparse=1
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <5811>: - Traversing drive 'C:' kind 'Local Fixed Disk'
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <5811>: - Traversing drive 'D:' kind 'Local Fixed Disk'
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <7324>: Volume Type for "D:\" is "NTFS", Supports Compression=1, Encryption=1, ACLS=1, DataStreams=1, Reparse=1, Sparse=1
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <5810>: - Not traversing drive 'F:' kind 'CDROM'
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <5810>: - Not traversing drive 'Z:' kind 'CDROM'
2014-03-27 13:23:39 avtar Info <5163>: Backup complete, wrapping-up session with Server
2014-03-27 13:23:41 avtar Info <11035>: Reading 17 user profiles
2014-03-27 13:23:50 avtar Info <11036>: Done reading user profiles
2014-03-27 13:23:50 avtar Info <5375>: 1 match for exclude pattern "C:\*".
2014-03-27 13:23:50 avtar Info <5375>: 1 match for exclude pattern "D:\*".
My concern is why it's skipping C: and D: ?
J_H_
498 Posts
0
March 27th, 2014 13:00
search your backup log for the word exclude.
it looks to me like C and D have been excluded - either in the datastore or in the avtar file on the client.
erikssong
1 Message
2
April 29th, 2015 23:00
Hello, I have just been informed that after 7.1 client there is new command.
If you are using 7.0.1-61 client or lower there is a hotfix 187776 which replaces the avtar binary .
A flag was used:
--no-query-vols=z: would then be used in an avtar.cmd file.
c:\program files\avs\var\avtar.cmd
If the Client is 7.1 or Higher, the hotfix is worked into the code, so you can just use the flag.
This means if you need to exclude A: or CD letter use the --no-query-vols=Drive letter in the avtar.cmd file on that server.
Also the line could be added in the dataset, to exclude all floppies.
/Göran
neil2048
3 Posts
0
July 12th, 2015 02:00
Thanks, this fixed my issue.. I added to the "More" part of the Dataset.
no-query-vols=A:\
f25
15 Posts
0
August 11th, 2015 02:00
Hi Guys,
I would start from the beginning. It is the VSS that reported an error, so we should check that first:
# vssadmin list writers
All should nicely report (while not running any backups):
State: [1] Stable
Last error: No error
If any one deviates: reboot...
You can see a list of all "more integrated" applications installed on the machine - all those applications have this interface to be backed up on Windows. Other applications should suffice with flat files copy.
Then VSS needs some space to "live"
# vssadmin list shadowstorage
When the answer is:
"No items found that satisfy the query"
You were quite lucky to have taken any decent SQL on VSS backup earlier It was snapshotted in the RAM only.
Each and every disk that contains volatile data (changed files, SQL or Exchange data files) needs to have some VSS Storage Space assigned.
Example for the C: drive:
# vssadmin add shadowstorage /For=C: /On=C: /MaxSize=7GB
The space assigned must be greater then sum of all data that may be written to volume during the backup time (while volume is snapshotted). If all works fine it is used only temporarily. If VSS writer gets hanged it may not remove its snapshot entirely, so that may require some manual intervention to deleted old snapshots.
Please let me know if that helped.
Rehan_dos
7 Posts
0
September 5th, 2018 08:00
Create an avtar.cmd file on the client, add the following flag: --no-query-vols=A: