Interwubs

Several months ago, one of the domain controllers at work crashed, causing several nasty problems that I was forced to work out. One of these problems was the loss of our Backup Exec 10 server, and consequently, our automated backups. Handily enough, our tape auto-loader also went kaput in that same week. This meant doing manual backups of our file server to my workstation using the NTBackup utility.

After several months of petitioning the finance department for the necessary funding, I was able to secure a new PowerVault RD1000 from Dell.  With functional backup hardware once again ready, I set about the task of installing Backup Exec 10 on my workstation.  After installing the base software and all the available updates, I deployed the backup agent to our servers.  When all was done, I setup a backup job and queued it for an immediate run.  This is where everything went wrong.

While the server was able to successfully backup our old NT4 inventory server, it threw the following error when attempting to communicate with our new file and inventory servers: The directory or file was not found, or could not be accessed.  After doing some research and banging my head against the monitor, I finally discovered the problem.  Service Pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 breaks compatibility with the Backup Exec 10 agent.  Since there was no way I was going to uninstall the service pack, what was I to do?

Fortunately, Symantec has provided a solution to this harrowing problem in the form of Backup Exec 10.0 rev. 5520.  I can’t say why Symantec chose not to offer this version of the software as an update or service pack, but it fixed the issue, so I can’t complain too much.  Simply download and extract the zip file, reinstall Backup Exec using the extracted files and push the new agent to all of your servers.  Works like a charm and its a real life saver for those of us too cheap to shell out for the latest version of good old BE.

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