ArcServe v11.1, BAOF and Outlook .PST Files

[PMatmlr]

I cannot for the life of me get my ArcServe v11.1 to backup users .pst files. I have purchased and installed the BAOF v11.1. I know it's running, as I have just backed up an open xls file. Does anyone know what the trouble is here, or have some documentation other than the help in BAOF?

Thanks in advance for any/all ideas.

 

[PMatmlr]

Update to this.
This morning, all of my Windows 2000 clients received the following error message when logging into Outlook:

"Task 'Microsoft Exchange Server - Receiving' reported error (0x80040116) " 'Unknown Error 0x80040116'

They could not send nor receive any mail.
All XP clients were ok.
I uninstalled BAOF, rebooted the server, and they can now access everything.

What is up with that?

(Ironically, it looks like the backup may have worked...)

 

[vschumpy]

Not sure if I understand exactly what you are trying to achieve. If it is to backup exchange using OFA - there is an agent for it - I would suggest you use this to fully protect exchange not OFA.

It would find it kinda unusual if you had exchange on the server and then had your users access a PST file on a network fileserver too. It would kinda defeats the purpose of having mailstores, if you do not have the users PST files on their local machines (in which case you would need OFA on each of their machines to backup their local open files).

 

[PMatmlr]

Sorry, sometimes I get carried away and assume everyone knows and sees what I do.

Our Exchange server will soon be moved to a remote location. we are setting our clients to have their mail delivered to a local mailbox (that way if the server or connection is down, they can at least access the messages they had). That pst file (for desktops) resides and is open on one of my Windows 2003 servers. Whenever I ran ArcServe backup, I would have a lock violation error message for the open pst files. I purchased and installed the Backup Agent for Open Files so that the open pst files will be backed up. Even after I installed this I received the lock violation error.

This morning, all of the Windows 2000 clients received the error message that I mentioned above.

After much frustration, I uninstalled the BAOF and rebooted the server. Only then could those clients access their mail and send/receive.

Do you know if there is a patch for baof? The CA website is a bit confusing at times.

Thanks a lot for your help!

 

[vschumpy]

You can try applying SP1 (english version link) :

http://supportconnect.ca.com/sc/redir.jsp?reqPage=search&searchID=QO63594

Not sure it includes any OFA updates though.

Not really sure what to suggest here, did you get any entries in the system or application event logs related to OFA or memory problems ?

Problem is, if you have 20 people each with say a 1Gb PST file open on the server this is going to cause significant overhead, maybe Anti-virus is playing a part in this too - maybe it's a conflict - OFA uses a system level driver, as do most Anti-virus products, I have seen problems in the past with this (Norton, Mcafee, etc) but nothing recently.

Your network traffic is also going to be kinda crazy if the PST's are on one server, the exchange on another, and the client is pulling from a PST on the server. I'm no Exchange geek, but I think even without OFA you're going to experience performance issues with this setup.

 

[PMatmlr]

thanks for the quick feedback. I'm going to download sp1 later tonight. No note at all in any event viewer of trouble. Not even in the backup log.
I don't really have a choice in setup and such. Corporate mandates delivery locally. I don't want to store the pst files on the local HD, cuz I know the users won't back them up to the server religiously. Besides, that could kill my network more than the little come and get of open psts.
I figure it has to be some sort of permission issue because my XP users don't have the same trouble. Only my Windows 2000 users. But upgrading those would take months...

 

[vschumpy]

Hmm no errors - you might have to resort to running perfmon to track down the problem. Monitoring the non-paged memory pool is always a favourite (simply because if any pool is going to get exhausted and hang a server, it is likely to be that one in my experience).

You might also want to check the IRPStackSize setting in the registry (this has nothing specifically to do with ARCserve, but i've seen this cause some funny results with shares if it is not set correctly - this default and optimal values differ between NT/W2K/Win2003 IIRC). Check the setting on the server to start off with.

Interesting that you mention that XP users don't have this problem - are the users all using the same outlook client regardless of the OS ?

If you wanted to prove that it was ofa handling the PST files that caused the issue, then you could re-install OFA but open up the OFA configuration GUI and specify an exclusion on the PST files. If it still occurs even with the exclusion set, it is more likely to be a resource problem or contention with another piece of software that uses a file system level driver (like AV as I previously mentioned).