Maintenance plan reporting "failed" but succeeded

  • I have an odd Maintenace plan issue with a SQL 2005 instance that I only partially support.  The full backups occur nightly and we do transaction log backups hourly.

    The tlog backups report back that they completed successfully, but if you look at the log, it shows the first part as being failed.  The Maintenance plan for tlog backup is very basic: backup the transaction log on all user databases (just the 1 database) and on error email the DBA.  Pretty simple stuff.  We use a similar approach on our SQL 2008 R2 and higher instances without any difficulty.
    when I look at the maintenance plan logs though, it shows the first part failed with error number 0 error message "The network path was not found.".  Next step shows success with a task detail of "Backup Database on Local server connection".  Files are being backed up to a network share and the full UNC path is given and when looking at that path, I can see the transaction log as being backed up successfully.
    I am just confused about this failed message.

    The other oddity is with full backups.  Those will say they failed with error number -1073548784 and a message about the network path not being found.  But when I check out the folder path, it comes back properly and the backup succeeds with a RESTORE VERIFYONLY as well.  The foll message I see is:

    Executing the query "BACKUP DATABASE [<database>] TO DISK = N'\\\\SQLBACKUP\\F$\\SQLBackup\\<instance>\\<database>\\<database>_backup_201703070100.bak' WITH NOFORMAT, NOINIT, NAME = N'<database>_backup_20170307010014', SKIP, REWIND, NOUNLOAD, STATS = 10
    " failed with the following error: "A nonrecoverable I/O error occurred on file "\\\\SQLBACKUP\\F$\\SQLBackup\\<instance>\\<database>\\<database>_backup_201703070100.bak:" 64(The specified network name is no longer available.).
    BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
    10 percent processed.
    20 percent processed.
    30 percent processed.
    40 percent processed.
    50 percent processed.
    60 percent processed.
    70 percent processed.
    80 percent processed.
    90 percent processed.
    Processed 165944 pages for database '<database>', file '<database>' on file 1.
    100 percent processed.
    Processed 1 pages for database '<database>', file '<database>' on file 1.". Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, "ResultSet" property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.


    The SQL instance and agent account is an AD account and that account has full control on the backup folder so I do not think it is permission related.  Plus the backup exists in the destination folder and our other SQL instances (on different physical machines) back up to the same main folder (\\sqlbackup\f$\sqlbackup) successfully and I only see errors when there is outages.

    Any thoughts on what I can try apart from upgrading to a newer SQL version?  The system does not support a newer SQL version.  It is a 3rd party system and we are just using the SSMS 2005 SP4 maintenance plan and the tools that come with that; no 3rd party backup tools being used on this instance.

    The above is all just my opinion on what you should do. 
    As with all advice you find on a random internet forum - you shouldn't blindly follow it.  Always test on a test server to see if there is negative side effects before making changes to live!
    I recommend you NEVER run "random code" you found online on any system you care about UNLESS you understand and can verify the code OR you don't care if the code trashes your system.

  • Think I figured this one out on my own... the transaction logs were failing to make the report file; properties of the maintenance plan were pointing to the old backup server for the report file.  Updated that and the transaction log is now succeeding.

    Get a slightly different error where it says it cannot access the report file because it is being used by another process, but I see these intermittently so they are safe to ignore.

    That was an odd issue, but I am glad it is corrected.

    The above is all just my opinion on what you should do. 
    As with all advice you find on a random internet forum - you shouldn't blindly follow it.  Always test on a test server to see if there is negative side effects before making changes to live!
    I recommend you NEVER run "random code" you found online on any system you care about UNLESS you understand and can verify the code OR you don't care if the code trashes your system.

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