Terminal Services Log

Our client had a problem with one of servers in their farm. The backup job could not be run if someone was accessing certain files on the computer. If file was opened the backup would fail.

Although most modern backup programs are able to backup an open file, our customer is backuping-up a very old database format, and even a modern backup program cannot handle it.

This is the error we were receiving. Backup could not be performed due to inability to lock the database.

Performing Backup jobs on a Terminal Sever can be complicated. An automated script is going to log-off all users at midnight. Users cannot login 12:00AM – 3:00AM to prevent them accessing server and opening a databases that is being backuped.

To ensure everything works smoothly we used our product Terminal Services Log to analyze user activities on server and check if there are no active sessions (if a user was not included in the log off script).

By using Users and Sessions report we were able to locate what the users that were still active in backup time… For these ‘problematic users’ we change idle logoff timeout and included them in the midnight auto log off script.

After correct configuration backup is running normally .

Tags: backup, case studies

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 5:18 pm and is filed under scenarios. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.