lots of "Backup status is unknown" email warnings during backup
Hello,
All of a sudden we are getting lots of email errors during backup
----------------------------
Backup status is unknown
VM Name
The backup agent was offline at a scheduled backup time. The status of the device backups will be unknown until the backup agent becomes online.
----------------------------
We get this error for every single backup.
Eventually, an we get an email that the backup is successful. I’ve checked the Acronis service remains running and active during the backup, I’ve also checked comms to the server is good during the backup.
Inside the management servers logs there is no mention of a issue and the backup all get green ticks without warning
Any help would be great. We are running hyper-v 2016 for the VM’s and 2012r2 for the acronis management server.
Hi Igor,
Yes, this happens for both scheduled and manual backups. As far as I can tell the agent is not going offline, the Acronis processes and services all appear to be running just fine during the backup.
Hello,
In this case, I would contact our support engineers to get this investigated.
Hi Igor,
Not really sure what to do here. I've pretty much given up on Acronis. It takes 4 days to get a response from support. At this rate with with the 4 day response time it's going to take a year to fix all the problems. And then there is the UI which is so slow and has various browser issues it has.
Acronis is putting up so many errors and faults and there really isn't any reason for that. The system is a brand new OS install. The only 3rd party software running on the box is Acronis. The only additional Microsoft software running is Hyper-V. The whole setup is only 4 weeks old, it should be running like clockwork.
Hello,
Wow, I'm really sorry to hear that you've been having these sorts of issues. However, I could only find tickets for alert bug and the Hyper-V snapshot problem, so I can't really comment on the situation in general. What other problems are you facing?
Note that we do have an update coming out really soon that fixes all the most common problems faced by our 12.5 customers, but no one has yet reported the "backup status unknown" alert behaviour you described. So there is a good chance that a lot of problems will be fixed by the update, but this particular one isn't likely to be one of them.
Which means that it would still require an investigation. If support is giving you trouble, we can try to troubleshoot on the forum, even though it's not a very good platform for such things.
Thinking about this issue, I've had an idea. It seems that you are backing up purely VMs using the agentless backup method? If this is the case, the agent doing the actual backup could be causing this on all the backups since it would be the single source.
Could you clarify if the alerts are all activated at the same time for all the machines being backed up? If not, could you clarify if there is a pattern? (Like the alert is activated right after backup has started on that particular VM, or when it is at a particular % or something).
The reason you don’t see any other tickets is I’m sorry to say I have no confidence in support. I tried again raising this issue with support (I’ll attach the transcript below). Basically Linganagouda logged in to my computer spent an hour looking at the email notifications window, then said this wasn’t the system causing the email notifications. So I showed him about custom notification inside plans. He didn’t know about this. Then he said someone would get back to me before the end of the day, no one did. Like i said before, it will take 4 days before I hear from someone and then they won’t know.
This forum is the only location where I get any form of assistance. I’ve started another tread for a different issue. I'm now spending between 1 and 2 hours every morning when I arrive at working on Acronis. I can’t continue spending this much time working on just getting backups running. It’s making me miss deadlines at work and consuming so much of my time.
Yes, we are using the agentless backup method and backing up VMs. I have the plan set to only backup 1 VM at a time max. The problem also happen when this setting is at default.
I haven’t been able to identify a pattern with the notifications. The messages start coming through just after the plan is scheduled to run. Sometimes we get 10 warnings per VMs, sometimes just 2.
Transcript from Acronis Support chat below:
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:45:53 am): Hello! Thank you for contacting Acronis Customer Central. My name is Linganagouda and I will be glad to assist you. Please allow me 3-4 minutes to review your message. If you already have an existing case number on this issue, please let me know. Otherwise, I will create a new case and provide you the case number.
Me (31/07/2017, 9:46:22 am): Hello,
All of a sudden we are getting lots of email errors during backup
----------------------------
Backup status is unknown
VM Name
The backup agent was offline at a scheduled backup time. The status of the device backups will be unknown until the backup agent becomes online.
----------------------------
We get this error for every single backup.
Eventually, an we get an email that the backup is successful. I’ve checked the Acronis service remains running and active during the backup, I’ve also checked comms to the server is good during the backup.
Inside the management servers logs there is no mention of a issue and the backup all get green ticks without warning
Any help would be great. We are running hyper-v 2016 for the VM’s and 2012r2 for the acronis management server.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:48:51 am): I see an open case with us regarding "backup of hyper-v vm failing".
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:49:15 am): Is this regarding same issue?
Me (31/07/2017, 9:49:24 am): that is a different problem
Me (31/07/2017, 9:49:37 am): i can't see that case on my login?
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:50:38 am): Thank you for your patience Ben.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:51:34 am): I have created the case, please find the case number for your future references 03052073.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:52:54 am): Okay, as I understand you are facing issue with the email notification, not any issue with the backup task. Am I correct?
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:53:28 am): Also please share m with whcih product you are facing htis issue?
Me (31/07/2017, 9:54:47 am): i have not idea if it's a notification is or backup issue, the emails and acronis logs are inconsistent. acronis version 12.5
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:55:16 am): May I start a remote session of your computer to get a better understanding of this issue?
Me (31/07/2017, 9:56:20 am): okay, one sec
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 9:56:43 am): Thank you. Please click on this link to join the remote session.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/12211
Me (31/07/2017, 10:00:42 am): 632 540 249
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:01:03 am): Thank you.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:01:15 am): I assure you that you will have full control of your system. You may disconnect the session at anytime, if or when you feel uncomfortable with the current remote session. Please let me know, if I click on any confidential information.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:20:57 am): I see this is not from this server.
Me (31/07/2017, 10:21:12 am): ?
Me (31/07/2017, 10:21:28 am): how do you see that?
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:21:29 am): Is the email notification setting are all correct?
Me (31/07/2017, 10:21:34 am): yes
Me (31/07/2017, 10:24:20 am): is lvl 2 support available
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:31:16 am): Can we check this with different email address, in your domain for testing purpose?
Me (31/07/2017, 10:34:30 am): no, it's not a notification issue, emails arrive just fine. it's a problem with the agent - is lvl2 available?
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:36:06 am): Okay I will check with the exports and get back to you.
Me (31/07/2017, 10:37:51 am): can i discount teamviewer for 2 mins?
Me (31/07/2017, 10:38:03 am): *disconnect
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:38:20 am): Sure you can.
Me (31/07/2017, 10:38:32 am): thanks, won't be long
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:38:41 am): No problem.
Me (31/07/2017, 10:41:41 am): i can reconnect whenever you need
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:42:27 am): I have taken the error message from that system.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:42:46 am): Let me check with my exports on this issue.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:43:29 am): Will update you what needs to be done further.
Me (31/07/2017, 10:44:00 am): do you need a export of the logs? or are you talking about talking with experts
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:44:08 am): Sorry Experts*
Me (31/07/2017, 10:44:22 am): okay
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:44:33 am): Is there anything else I may assist you with today?
Me (31/07/2017, 10:45:19 am): how long will this be before i receive a response
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:46:21 am): You will be getting the update end of the day
Me (31/07/2017, 10:46:39 am): just for your future support calls today, you have your microphone on and are broadcasting. i can hear everything you say
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:48:39 am): Yes, you can reach us any time with 24/7.
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:48:49 am): We support for 24/7.
Me (31/07/2017, 10:50:41 am): okay then, i wasn't asking that - i look forward to hearing from your experts
Linganagouda (31/07/2017, 10:51:03 am): Sure. no problem.
Unfortunately Supportedge is 100% right. We are facing exactly same issues as he is and i'm spending hours with Acronis in order to have at least some backups. There are lot of issues that we even didn't report to support or issues that i just closed without resolving .. because the only thing that support was able to provide was: send us the logs (in our case 1 log generation from vmware&acronis is 1 hour of work because of environment size) recreate the backup plan, reboot, redeploy .....
We are with Acronis from version 7 or 8 i guess ... and up to 9 it was guite fine. There were some problems however the issues were solved and the product was usable. Starting from version 12 the quality went down by 95% and 12.5 makes the things even worse. This is very pity as i think that the concept of product is good. However Acronis is not able to get it to the state where it does the backup and restore.
Fortunately for us we are now in transition off Acronis completely ... as we don't see any future with AB as it is getting worse with every release.
I use Acronis for about 30 clients and I have gotten these errors on multiple clients on multiple types of servers. I have also got false errors on things like db backups saying they werent backed up but when you goto recover them you can..... My clients are furious. I have to turn off the notifications to them.
I regret updating to acronis 12 than 12.5. 11.7 was solid although a pain to manage.
I too have not gotten anywhere with support. They dont even answer my tickets or emails.
This update better be coming out soon because I am fed up with the support and unwillingness to even tell me its a known issue and we are working on a fix.
Oh and to add to this... I have a vmware 12.5 backup that like to start at random times but fails to start on the scheduled time.... WTF how is that even possible?
In reply to I use Acronis for about 30… by truwrikodrorow…
Hello Mannino,
We released an update on Saturday. Please try it an let me know if you face any other issues.
Concerning the notifications:
- One of our goals with 12.5 was to make a product that was able to detect and properly report all possible problem with backups, not just errors.
For example, if you want to have the same behavior as 11.7, just set two checkboxes in the notification menu:
- "Backup failed"
- "Activity failed".
These are the only two classes of problems that were actively reported in 11.7. Setting these two is exactly equivalent to setting "Error" in the 11.7 notification options.
I believe in this case your clients will not be facing any such issues and the product will seem just as stable, at the cost of transparency and you not knowing if -- for example -- the backup is frozen. Version 11.7 is not able to report on these problems at all, but this obviously does not mean that the problem didn't exist.
Since confidence in backups through omission and ignorance is a very bad strategy, our new notification functionality is very aggressive in terms of finding possible backup issues and seeing as it's entirely new, it is not without bugs in the form of false-positives. This is obviously a problem and we will obviously fix it in the very near future.
Please let me know if you continue to receive false-positive notifications after installing Update 1.
I appear to have stumbled on the fix. All off the VMs on this box have dynamic ram configured. For another reason we needed to change one off the VMs to static ram. No more errors from Acronis! Go figure? Even though the error would occur backing up every single VM, not just the one we changed the RAM configuration on.
Thank you everyone for your support. Acronis support makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world having these issues, this seems to be backed up by the lack of general information online anymore about Acronis products. I don’t know if people don’t bother trying to resolve Acronis problems or less people are using Acronis.
Acronis support still haven’t responded to this issue. Over the last month or so I have reported 4 issues. None have been resolved.
Luckily none of our clients are running 12.5. Only one is running 12, the others are running 11.7 or less. Some even have 10.x
My general advice for anyone using Acronis is, if by chance it happens to work reliably – never update. This is completely opposite to our company policy for all other software.
Thank you Igor for your reply but I’m sorry I won’t be trying the updated 12.5 for some time. I agree omission and ignorance is a very bad strategy when it comes to anything IT. If this Acronis’ new philosophy could you explain what the point of an email notification error that is not reflected in the products own internal logs is?
Also, for some reason my ID keeps changing from Ben to Supportedge and back again?
Hello Ben,
Thank you for the tip about dynamic memory. I will ask our QA guys to reproduce the issue and create a bug
Hello,
I have the same problem.
I receive every day "Backup status I unknown" but I don´t know why?
I have just talked with your support Team. But after deleting the manager e reinstall the manager I have spent just a day to make the acronis to work again. bud now it stuck again on this point. The Backups are made. Bud every day the same warning. And when I restart the Acronis Manager under services al errors are going and everything are fine.
How I can fix this problem?
Hello when i restart the service "Acronis Management Server Service" all error´s are cleared. I need your help...
Hi Thomas,
If any backup agent is not available when a scheduled backup should be starting, the message “Backup status is unknown” appears. If you have already checked that all the agents are online when the message appears, please keep on investigating the issue with our Support Team. Most probably the answer to your question why the message shows up requires a detailed logs analysis.
Thank you
I've had similar errors with backup plans for VMware VMs for months, and yesterday finally resolved it.
My environment:
One physical server AMS on Windows 2012R2
Vmware Esxi 6.0 cluster with 3 hosts with 3 Acronis Virtual Appliances.
About 20 VMs with individual backup plans.
One of the hosts in cluster had unsyncronized time, and Acronis agent as a VM "was offline" at scheduled time even it was up and waiting for connections. The time difference was about 2 minutes.
I updated ntp settings on all Vmware hosts, restarted ntp service on them and then restarted Acronis agent VMs, because agent itself has no option to set up date and time and gets info from parent host with every boot.
After that all my actual plans started working as required.
So, my suggestion is to check ntp settings, synchronize time on AMS, VMware hosts and Acronis agents if they are VMs.
Hope it will help.
Hello,
Thank you for the information!