• To throw something in here....what are the chances that this odd issue is associate with a lack of memory (and if so, how!!).

    The only reason I ask, is that I've just been troubleshooting another issue on this server - a set of failed backups from this evening, which was simply backing up of the system databases. It would appear as though SQL has been significantly struggling for memory. SQLBackup returned the following error:

    VDI error 1010: Failed to get the configuration from the server because the timeout interval has elapsed. SQL Backup required 6,291,456 bytes of free SQL Server memory, which was not available. VDI error: An abort request is preventing anything except termination actions.

    ......

    SQL error 3013: BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.

    SQL error 18210: BackupVirtualDeviceSet::Initialize: Request large buffers failure on backup device 'SQLBACKUP_9409B57E-8DC9-416A-B5E9-BDF77A16A98D'. Operating system error 0x8007000e(failed to retrieve text for this error. Reason: 15105).

    I've just restarted the instance in order to get these backups out before midnight and this issue has gone away. I'm a bit annoyed with myself here, I've messed up my troublshooting 🙂 I've fixed the problem without getting to bottom of it and I don't know WHAT has fixed it! Gah!