PowerProtect Data Manager

This article provides curated links to Dell PowerProtect Data Manager product documentation, videos, and information including deployment, configuration, administration, and disaster recovery.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager remediation is available for the Apache Log4j Remote Code Execution Vulnerability that may be exploited by malicious users to compromise the affected system. Dell recommends implementing this remediation as soon as possible in light of the critical severity of the vulnerability.

PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) discovery jobs for Cloud Snapshot Manager (CSM) fail when a CSM protection plan contains more than 100 assets. PPDM attempts to build a summary payload that exceeds the internal API size limit. The API returns an HTTP 413 "Payload Too Large" error. This aborts the discovery and protection processes. This is a known defect affecting PPDM versions 20.2 and earlier.

Dell PowerProtect Data Manager remediation is available for multiple security vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious users to compromise the affected system.

VCenter SSL host certificates were renewed (new root + intermediate chain). Virtual Machine (VM) backups failed with "The VM Direct engine cannot complete the backup … connection between the vCenter Server and the ESXi (Elastic Sky X Integrated) host" error, and logs showed the certificate state as UNKNOWN.

This article explains the cause and resolution of the NVRAMRemoteBatteryFailure alert (Event ID: EVT-NVRAM-00202) on Data Domain systems; This alert indicates a critical hardware fault with the NVRAM remote battery, which must be resolved before the file system can be accessed.

An administrator cannot access the PowerProtect Data Manager appliance via SSH even though the PowerProtect Interface remains accessible. This issue occurs for one of two reasons: (1) the administrator attempts to SSH with a user account that was created in the PowerProtect Interface, which does not grant SSH access; or (2) the admin SSH account is locked due to repeated failed login attempts or the SSH password is forgotten. Unlocking the admin account or resetting the SSH password via the vSphere console resolves the issue.

The PowerProtect Data Manager interface cannot edit or modify a protection policy and displays a 503 error indicating that vCenter discovery has not been started or is still in progress. The root cause is a stale vCenter Server instance UUID stored in the Elasticsearch database (ESDB) that no longer matches the current vCenter instance UUID. PPDM cannot reconcile the mismatched UUIDs during discovery, which blocks protection policy operations. Dell resolved this issue in PowerProtect Data Manager release 19.14.0‑20.

On PowerProtect Data Manager server cloudmgr service is restarting resulting in cloud tier jobs to fail.

Exchange backups log a VolumeStream error and display "Unable to read from the volume. The device is not ready." The cause is a volume change creating a Volume Copy Block (VCB), invalidating the file handle.

This article explains how to resolve ADS0005 errors during DD system discovery in PowerProtect Data Manager caused by a misconfigured login session limit that prevents authentication token generation.

When configuring PostgreSQL database backups through the PowerProtect Data Manager (DM) Generic Application Agent, the default pg_dump backup script uses /tmp as a temporary staging area before writing the backup data to the Data Domain. If the PostgreSQL database is larger than the available space in /tmp, the backup fills the file system, causing PowerProtect Data Manager to run out of disk space, and the backup fails. This issue affects PowerProtect Data Manager environments using the default PostgreSQL backup script parameters.

PowerProtect Data Manager application recovery using Cyber Recovery Manager fails. The failure happens when doing the Storage-Unit replacement task. The 'Copy-catalog' service on PPDM crashes and restarts due to OutOfMemoryError during the storage unit replacement process which causes the problem.

The PowerProtect Data Manager appliance generates alert SYS0003 indicating low capacity on the /root mount point when available capacity on the root file system drops below 30%. Orphaned upgrade files from PowerProtect Data Manager 19.14 or 19.15 upgrades remain in the /usr/local/brs/lib/cdr/upgrade/ directory and consume disk space on the root mount point.

The PowerProtect Data Manager appliance generates alert SYS0003 indicating low capacity on the /logs mount point. The alert triggers when available capacity on the /logs file system drops below 25%. PowerProtect Data Manager includes an automatic log purge mechanism that activates when the /logs used capacity exceeds 90%, but the gap between the 25% alert threshold and the 90% purge threshold means the alert may persist for an extended period before automatic cleanup occurs.

The PowerProtect Data Manager appliance generates a daily SYS0003 alert indicating low capacity on the /agents mount point. The PowerProtect Data Manager 20.1.0.0-17 release includes uncompressed Oracle AIX agent packages and debug symbols that occupy excessive space on the /agents file system. This is a known defect that causes the /agents mount point to exceed its capacity threshold.

Linux file system backups performed through PowerProtect Data Manager fail with the error "5083-Invalid sequence number" during the data write operation to the Data Domain. The failure occurs when the DDR write operation encounters an invalid sequence number, which causes the write to fail and the backup to abort.

When PowerProtect Data Manager performs a DISASTER_RECOVERY:\ backup, the backup includes all available drives from the server, which can result in unexpectedly large backup sizes and potential storage space issues.

PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) NAS backup failures present error codes such as ABNA0016 and ABNA0023. Caused by share name mismatches, permission issues, protocol settings, proxy sizing, and known issues.

An Oracle database backup initiated through PowerProtect Data Manager fails with RMAN‑06059 (expected archived log not found, loss of archived log compromises recoverability). The Oracle Recovery Manager (RMAN) repository contains references to archived redo logs that no longer exist on the disk. Typically, the log files were manually deleted from the file system without first being removed from the RMAN catalog or control file metadata. Running an RMAN crosscheck to expire the missing archive logs and then deleting the expired entries addresses the issue.

Cyber Recovery PowerProtect Data Manager restore fails when the access token expires during long, multi‑phase operations. Certificate restoration then disables authentication services, preventing token refresh and causing failure.

Dell Samsung Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) PM1653 and PM1655 solid state drives may report excessive Sense Key faults 0x3, 0x11, 0x0, or 0x4, 0x29, 0x4. These faults have the potential to cause unexpected drive issues.

This KB article discusses how an Oracle backup and discovery job on an AIX host agent fails with an ADA0013 error code.

This article describes intermittent UI/CLI unresponsiveness on PowerProtect Data Manager Virtual Machines (VMs) caused by memory pressure leading to swap exhaustion, and the system stops responding.

Upload of upgrade package fails with below error: "The upload attempt failed. Click Upload Package and select the update for installation again"

PowerProtect Data Manager Server Disaster Recovery (DR) backups are not running after upgrade to version 20.2.0-14.

After adding a Microsoft SQL Server database asset to a protection policy in PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM), the system job "Configuring SQL Databases" hangs indefinitely and never completes. The asset appears to be added successfully in the PPDM UI — the policy asset count increases and the asset shows the correct policy assignment — but the configuration session never finishes. Backup jobs for the newly added asset also hang. The root cause is that the PowerProtect Agent Service child process responsible for spawning configuration jobs has crashed or is not running on the SQL Server host. The reason for the child process failure is currently unknown.

The PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) VM Direct Protection Engine deployment fails during the initialization phase with the error "Unable to connect to External vProxy on port 9090, the host service is not running." This occurs when a firewall or network configuration between the PPDM appliance and the VM Direct Engine blocks communication on the required ports. This is an environmental/network configuration issue that applies to all PowerProtect Data Manager versions.

Virtual machine (VM) backups protected by PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) using the Transparent Snapshot Data Mover (TSDM) solution fail with error codes ABV0016 and ABV0006. The failure indicates the vCenter task for "Cancel SDM Snapshot" completed with an error stating "DPD Sync in progress" or "DPD Snapshot in progress." The affected VM has an orphaned vSphere Snapshot Data Mover (SDM) task that the TSDM backup workflow cannot cancel due to inconsistencies in the Data Protection Daemon (dpd) on the ESXi host. The backups were previously completing successfully before the orphaned task appeared.

PowerProtect Data Manager (PPDM) vCenter asset source discovery fails with error code ADS0001 because the vCenter Server has reached its maximum user session count (default 550). The vCenter rejects new connection attempts with a 503 Service Unavailable error indicating the session limit has been reached. Terminating existing user sessions or rebooting the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) reduces the session count below the limit and allows PPDM discovery to resume.