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Since WindowsServerBackup does not support backups of drives over 16TB, I thought I give Veeam Backup Agent for Windows. 

 

Unfortunately it only works for some days and then fails. But let’s start from the beginning.

 

  • Host is Windows Server 2025
  • Bare metal
  • File level backup to an external 3.5” HDD
  • set to run daily

Now, let’s look at what happened:

 

  • 9 days ago we created the job. 
  • This worked well until 5 days ago
  • For some reasons, nothing happened 5 days ago
  • 4 days ago, I got this error:

  • this is rather starnge, since I was able to look at the drive E: that hosts the disk.

  • I clicked manually to run another backup. This worked and created the succesful backup 4 days ago

  • 3 days ago it also worked

  • 2 and 1 day ago, again nothing happened. 

when I hover over Veeam, I see this error:

 

any ideas what is happening here?

Hi ​@MariaMiller -

I assume you’re using Veeam Agent for Windows?..and Free Edition? Look at the log location in:
C:\ProgramData\Veeam\Backup\Endpoint\<job-name> to see if there is anything in it with better info to troubleshoot.

https://www.veeam.com/kb2404

I couldn’t find much in my search on your error. At the very least, you could open a Support Case with Veeam to see what they say (as a ‘best effort’ kinda thing):
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/agentforwindows/userguide/support_report.html?ver=60

Best.

If after you check the logs there are still issues this might be better suited for a support ticket.  I have used the Agent on many systems and never had issues other than when repo connection is not there.

Maybe the external disk has an energy saving mode or stuff like that. The error basically says that the target is not available so you should check and disable any kind of power saving settings.

​@MariaMiller Error message looks relevant to this and please check this KB https://www.veeam.com/kb1909

​@coolsport00 strangely there are no logs between the 20th may (6 days ago when the last run was) and now (started it again by hand). 

 

Since I changes too much stuff manually, I will give it another try next time it fails. 

 

 

​@lukas.k it is basically just external Seagate drive without any configurable settings. I changed it from “Quick removal” to “Better performance” without any luck. 

 

​@Mohamed Ali Thank you but I doubt this is related, since it is only one single job. 

 

 

There are however two suspicious things.

 

I was able to enter E:\ in explorer, but not into the folder VeeamBackup. Error about the folder being unavailable. But I could create and delete a testfolder in E:\

 

Windows event logs shows these errors after a reboot:

 

  1. BIM2 'Veeam Agent for Windows Service' is attempting to register a Service Principal Name (SPN) for the 'Veeam Agent for Windows Service' service.
  2. Failed to register Service Principal Name (SPN) 'VeeamAgentWindows' for the BIM2 'Veeam Agent for Windows Service' service. SPN for the 'Veeam Agent for Windows Service' service has not been registered. Error: The user name or password is incorrect.

  3. Veeam Agent 'Job BIM2' finished with Failed.

    Job details: Job iJob BIM2] cannot be started. SessionId: cbd27fe4c-89f2-4503-b92c-08d9a2ecc086], Timeout: -361.2177387 sec]

    Job has failed unexpectedly

I can then run the job manually and it goes through without any errors. 

 

 

Thanks again for your inputs. Since too many things changed, I think I will wait for the next failure and then open up a ticket.

Next failure happened. 

 

Seems somehow connected with the system auto rebooting after Windows Updates. Which is strange, since it should be done with the system user. 

 

Anyway, I wanted to open up a ticket, when I noticed that the storage used was also way off. 

It is roughly 8TB, with almost no data changing (maybe 100GB a day) but the backup was already at 14TB. This is where I decided it wasn’t worth it further investigating. 

 

I have more trust in the stability of robocoping the data to a ZFS dataset and create a snapshot there. 

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