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Failed to open backup location issue

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We started running into Acronis failing with "Failed to open backup location" on some of the backups. This is with Acronis 11.5 Advanced Server for Windows and Virtual Edition for VMWare vSphere. Strangely, some backups were succeeding but others were failing to the exact same backup destination. Looking at the destination, even the failed backups had successfully written the full backup TIB file. After digging in further and a taking a large series of network captures during both successful and failed backups, we discovered that the only difference between the successful backups and the failed attempts was the amount of time it took the backup destination to rename the temporary backup file to its final file name.

Workflow from Acronis VM backup: there are a number of temporary lock files that are issued, renamed, and deleted during the backup, and the main backup file is also written to a temporary file name and then renamed once the file is complete. Looking at the network captures, after the main backup file ([file name]1.TIB) is closed from writing, Acronis issues a series of read directories and get infos looking for the final file name ([file name].TIB, no 1 at the end) on the directory the backup file was written. During this set of activity, Acronis also issues a rename command on the temporarily named file to the final file name.

The backup was successful whenever the time from the file [file name]1.TIB finished (i.e. file close was issued) to the renamed file being complete [file name].TIB was in the ~50ms range. For backups where this time exceeded a couple hundred ms, the backup failed (even though there were no errors from the server, just responding slowly). Acronis seems to have a hard timeout limit looking for the file rename to succeed. We weren't able to determine exactly where the threshold was, but suffice to say if it takes longer than 500ms, it will always fail.

Deployments where you may run into this false positive failure issue:
1. High network latency environment between the backup source and the destination vault
2. Writing to slow media (eg. USB device) at the destination location
3. Slow or loaded backup destination location (eg older or loaded NAS device)
4. Very large number of backups in the destination location folder (due to the number of read directory listings that are issued before the rename)

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Hello Adam B,

Thank you for posting this question in our forum. I am happy to assist you. 

To investigate into this issue, you should contact support. Please provide also the network logs and the link to this thread. You will find all available support options in our Customer handbook.

If there is anything else we can do for you, please let me know.

Thank you.

Hi Adam, just curios here though. Were you able to contact support about this already? How did it go?