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Incremental scheme stopped creating full backups

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Hi,

I've been using a 1 Full + 6 Incremental scheme as shown in the attachment.  For a couple of months, this had been working fine.  There were never more than four of the 1F+6I chains at any point.  All of a sudden, the program stopped creating full backups and my most recent one now has 22 incrementals.  I haven't made any edits to the backup options.  The only thing that I can think of that changed is that I upgraded to Build 6206.  But I'm not really sure whether that was before or after this issue developed.

What's the best way to get back on track with the 1F+6I scheme?

Thanks,

Steve

 

Attachment Size
10-2inc-custom_keep64.jpg 39.81 KB
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Steve, welcome to these user forums.

The main reason we see this type of behaviour with many more incrementals than configured is because of changes being made to the task configuration options, but you have said that you haven't made any edits to these, so difficult to say why this may be happening without more information.

The first check is to look at what the recent backup task log files are saying about the backup process to see if there are any clues there - please use the MVP Log Viewer - link in my signature below - to look at the logs.

Second check is to look at the actual backup files on your backup storage drive - how are these shown as being named, are there any obvious indicators shown in the file names such as have v3-1 or other -? numbers appended to the file names?

The quickest way of resolving this issue would probably be to use the 'Clone task settings' option to duplicate the backup task - this will create a copy of the task with all its configuration with the same name but prefixed by (1) 

Once you have the cloned task shown in the task list, take the option to Remove the original task settings (no need to delete the files created by the task), then rename the cloned task to remove the prefix (1).  You should then point this new / cloned task to a new folder on the backup drive so that the task isn't going to find existing backup files already there, but will start a new Full backup version chain then continue this with the configured number of incremental backup files.

There don't appear to be any unusual filenames in the most recent set.  They run from XXX_full_b12_s1.tib thru XXX_inc_b12_s23tib.  On the day that the first full backup was missed (ie, replaced by an incremental) the log shows a few errors but ends successfully.  I've attached a copy which I'm sure would be more meaningful to you than me. ;)

I'm not seeing "Clone task settings" in my version...is this equivalent to "Save As"?

Thanks for your help with this, Steve!

Steve

 

 

Attachment Size
411366-138547.log 4.64 KB

Steve, thanks for the log file information, the only error indication that I see is that you may have a VSS snapshot issue with one of the drives or partitions included in your backup task.

2017-04-28 18:02:55:879 9244 W013C0014: Error 0x13c0014: VSS retry: 1
| error 0x10c442: Failed to start creating the volume snapshot.
| error 0x10c46b: VSS writer 'SqlServerWriter' with class ID 
| error 0xfff0

This is over 2 weeks old now so may no longer be showing in the logs for later task execution?

For the Clone settings option, you need to click on the "V" menu indicator to the right of your task name which will show a drop-down menu with additional options to choose from.

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411369-138550.png 4.78 KB

Right, in the last couple of weeks since that log snippet, there were only 1 or 2 instances of what looked like minor errors.  I cloned the task and directed it to a new directory and that started a new full backup.  Hopefully, it will behave better than it has over the last 3 weeks. 

Thanks for your help, Steve!

Steve