• coolchaitu - Monday, January 15, 2018 9:39 PM

    Good Morning Experts,

    One of our SQL Server instance has few databases with encryption turned on. The backups for these databases were failing with below error:

    Cannot open session for cryptographic provider 'LunaEKMProvider'. Provider error code: 5. (Authentication Failure - Consult EKM Provider for details)

    However, when the server team rebooted this server on sunday as part of planned activity, the backup jobs ran successfully.

    I just checked the encryption state and it is turned on. I am unable to understand why the backup jobs failed before the reboot?Please advise

    You'd probably need to check with SafeNet, their documentation or whoever works with that piece. It sounds like it's however they protect/manage the keys and not really a SQL Server thing. From using it once years ago, there is something you install to work with the keys so maybe that got installed and then needed a reboot? Check first with whoever is managing that piece in your infrastructure, they probably know.

    Sue