Backups Archives - Squidworks

Backup Windows for LabTech gets new Offsite Synchronization features

The Plugin4LabTech development team has let it leak out that the next version of the Backup Windows for LabTech plugin will now include Offsite Synchronization as a standard feature in all new versions. This feature allows MSPs to Offsite the local backups with schedulable Sync times keeping mirrors of the local backup directory on storage services across the internet.

Developers at P4L went on to comment that all transmissions over the internet of backup files were encrypted and secure point to point. With all the security issues abound you shouldn’t have to worry about someone scarfing up you backups. Shannon (a.k.a Cubert) said “We are not trying to reinvent the wheel here, we are using proven technology by long standing venders. So it just works.”

Plugins4LabTech has now made it so that no MSP has an excuse not to have good quality backups as part of their offerings. No longer do you need to force consumers into expensive backup services to ensure a quality backup is maintained for your clients. You can also be assured that backup are safe offsite in event of a disaster event.

Virtualize Anywhere, Backups are created using Microsoft Virtual Disk format so all backups files are VHDX files that when mounted can become a Virtual Machine or be mounted as a hard drive. This makes it a great tool for disaster recovery, mount and recover just about anywhere using the tools you have within your Windows system. No special recover tools to download and maintain which is great when the fires are raging.

Automatic backup archive usage management means you will never run out of disk space on your target backup disk making backups worry free!
After you configure a disk for a scheduled backup, Windows Server Backup automatically manages the disk usage—you do not need to be concerned about running out of disk space after repeated backups. Windows Server Backup will automatically reuse the space occupied by older backups when creating new backups. The management tool displays the backups that are available as well as the disk usage information. This can help you plan for provisioning additional storage to meet your recovery objective.

To get more information on this plugin and all the other plugins Plugins4LabTech offers please visit Plugins4LabTech.com

Backup Windows for LabTech

Integrated LabTech Backups

Squidworks released today the most cost effective backup solution integrated with LabTech available, coming in at a whopping $1 per agent!

If you are like me, then backups are pretty costly at an average of $40 dollars a server license. If you have a 100 servers to backup, then your monthly bill is $4,000.00 per month; at 12 months is $48,000.00 dollars a year for backup software. What if I told you we can do the same thing, with even more built-in LabTech features and at just $100 bucks? Yes, $1200 bucks a year is all it will cost the average MSP with 100 server agents to backup every server they manage. For those occasions where you need more, $125.00 bucks get you unlimited agents! Backup every Windows 7 to Windows 10 system and Windows 2008 to Windows 2012 R2 you manage for a single flat fee. Have all the power LabTech can give you with mass management to control and monitor your backups. Get great logging, metrics and history from our intuitive gauges and graphs or see in just a single click where you stand with the safety of your clients files. No guess work needed!

Take command of your backups again!

Here is a peek at what they been working on. Everything you see done here is done inside LabTech never touching the end PC.

Backups a system in four steps

Restore a system in 4 steps

See and access available restore points

See available event logs relevant to backups

See your global statuses fast and easy

Easy to understand metrics

See individual and global restore point time lines

Get the plugin at

APPAssureD – Dell AppAssure Backup Plugin For LabTech

A new plugin is under development here inside the Squidworks garage that allows Labtech MSPs to manage Dell Appassure Backup Cores servers from a common console inside of Labtech. The new plugin leverages Appassure REST API to mine data from each core and send that data back to the Labtech database. Using the same processes the plugin is able to send commands back to the cores to preform various tasks like start a new backup or replication.

The plugin provides a common view of each core at the location level console in Labtech. You can select one of many cores at any location and view the protected servers managed by that core. Selecting a protected server provides details about that server and the list of snapshots preformed on that system. We have many great features planed for this plugin so start following us now!

Client Console

Dashboard View

The plugin is still under development and will we have a release for early beta testers. Place a comment here you would like to be notified of updates and being included in the beta testing.

Get Version 1.0.1 Beta here

You Will need Powershell 3 on all Cores, Here is a script to install Powershell 3 directly from LabTech

Get PS Installer Script Here

{Solved} Appassure 5 -> Error occurred pairing to agent at URL

Replay.Core.Contracts.Agents.AgentPairingFailedException: Error occurred pairing to agent at URL

Here is several possible fixes for this type of error based on state of agent systems, Each fix is based on a given type of problem. I will continue to post other fixes for this error type as I come across them.

New Agent Install on Windows DC or SBS server.

So you just installed an Appassure 5 core server and now are trying to protect a new Windows domain controller or maybe an Microsoft SBS server and you keep getting the following errors.

There is a quick fix that worked great for me when this happened to me during a deployment to a Microsoft SBS 2011 system. Found it to be an issue when the TLS client authentication fails between Unified Communications peers where the Configure Group Policy to ignore the list of trusted certification authorities on the computer that hosts the UC client is disabled.

Open up REGEDIT on the core and agent system and add a DWord to following key.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SecurityProviders\SCHANNEL

Add Dword -> SendTrustedIssuerList with a value of zero.

Now restart the core and agent services and retry to protect server.

It should connect and add new server to core as expected.

————————————————————————————————————–

Agents Previously Paired on Another Core

If after removing an agent from protection on a Core that protects other agents, you receive an error asking you to repair the orphaned agent when you attempt to re-add it to protection on a new Core. During the repair it fails with same error “Error occurred pairing to agent at URL” and the stack trace shows the error below.

Stack Trace Error:

Call to service method https://localhost:8006/apprecovery/api/core/agents/pairing/repairOrphan POST failed: Error occurred pairing to agent at URL ‘https://anvil-hosting:8006/apprecovery/api/agent/’

Replay.Core.Contracts.Agents.AgentPairingFailedException: Error occurred pairing to agent at URL ‘https://anvil-hosting:8006/apprecovery/api/agent/’ —> WCFClientBase.HttpUnauthorizedRequestException: Call to service method https://anvil-hosting:8006/apprecovery/api/agent/pair/connect GET failed at WCFClientBase.ClientBase.HandleResponse(Uri uri, String method, HttpResponseMessage response) at WCFClientBase.ClientBase.GetResponse(Uri uri, String method, String knownEtag) at WCFClientBase.ClientBase.ExecuteServiceCall[T](Uri uri, String method) at Replay.Core.Implementation.Agents.AgentsService.VerifyPairedAgentConnectivity(AgentDescriptor agentDescriptor) at Replay.Core.Implementation.Agents.AgentsService.AddOrRepairProtectedAgent(AgentDescriptor agentDescriptor, Boolean isOrphaned)

Follow this process to to remove the connection information in the registry of the Cores and Agents involved in the moves.

On the old and new Core servers:

Open the registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\AppRecovery
Verify that the agent’s registry key no longer displays this specific agent ID.

On the agent systems:

Stop the Agent Service.
Open the registry editor and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\AppRecovery.
Export and verify that the old Core pairing is still visible under the Pairing settings.
Delete the entire agent’s key.
Start the Agent Service.

Now Protect the agent once again after all services have been restarted. You should not get any orphan or repair warnings and the system should complete without errors.

Goodluck

Cubert 😎

[Solved] – AppAssure Replay 4.7 Log write failed for device \Device\HarddiskVolume (drive ?:).

AppAssure backups stop making snapshots and you start seeing a flood of log errors in the event viewer reporting Log write failed for device \Device\HarddiskVolume (drive ?:). the failure status code is the last word of the data. an error event occurred. eventid: 0xcaa12433

I came across a website called Merrit Solutions that has a great little how-to on fixing the dreaded Log write failed for device \Device\HarddiskVolume (drive ?:) error you get in the logs when you have a System Reserve Partition with excessive or oversized AALOGS.

Thanks Merrit Solutiions for keeping this thread alive.

Here are the steps to quickly resolve the issue.

Assign a drive letter to the System Reserved Partition in diskmgmt.msc. (This is the 100 Mb partition that works with the operating system.)
Make Folders in this newly assigned drive letter visible in Explorer Folder Options (unhide hidden and system folders).
Grant your current login account full access to the System Volume Information folder through Explorer Security Tab.
Confirm the existence of excessive AALOG files or file sizes in System Volume Information Folder. (I had one AALOG file that was 77Mb.)
There should only be 1 AALOG… file, usually only a few KB in size.
If you do not see excessive or oversized AALOGS, do not proceed.
Issue “fltmc unload aafsflt” command in elevated Command Prompt (Run As Administrator) to release all of the AALOGs.
In elevated command prompt change to the disk assigned above in Step 1) and “cd Sys*”.
“del aalog*.*”to delete them.
Before closing the Command Prompt run “fltmc load aafsflt” to reload the filter driver and re-create clean new AALOGs.
When I deleted the AALOGs I got an alert from my core warning me to reboot the Agent machine.
Snapshot the machine again (you should see a Base and incrementals thereafter.)
Remove the drive letter assigned in the first step.
Restart the server or atleast restart the replay agent on server and logs should stop.

[Solved] – Unable to take VSS Snapshot and transfer data for ‘C:’ Unable to take VSS Snapshot of volume(s) because the VSS subsystem is in a bad state.

AppAssure Replay backup reports Errors, ‘Unable to take VSS Snapshot of volume(s) because the VSS subsystem is in a bad state.’ or ‘Error taking snapshot of volume(s): AddToSnapshotSet failed when trying to add volume ‘C:’ – VSS Provider is not registered’

I found this to be a fairly common issue when deploying new Replay agents out to Windows 2003 servers. There are several things that should be addressed when deploying Replay agents to Windows 2003 Servers including repairing LSP, refreshing and / or verifying VSS states and removing conflicting software. I have had great success resolving these types of issues by following these simple steps.

#1 Remove Offending Software Conflicts

Offending Software:

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 Agent

Symantec Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows

any 3rd party backup software

#2 Reset VSS Writers

I use a simple bat file that re-registeres all my VSS writers and then I follow that up with a reboot. Below is the bat script commands, copy them to a file, name the file vss.bat, then run the file. It should shutdown a few services and re-register the VSS writers. reboot is needed after this has completed.

net stop “System Event Notification”
net stop “COM+ Event System”
net stop “Microsoft Software Shadow Copy Provider”
net stop “Volume Shadow Copy”
cd /d %windir%\system32
net stop vss
net stop swprv
regsvr32 /s ole32.dll
regsvr32 /s oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 /s Vss_ps.dll
vssvc /register
regsvr32 /s /i swprv.dll
regsvr32 /s /i eventcls.dll
regsvr32 /s es.dll
regsvr32 /s stdprov.dll
regsvr32 /s vssui.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml3.dll
regsvr32 /s msxml4.dll
net start “COM+ Event System”

#3 Repair the Layered Service Providers

Layered Service Provider (LSP) is a feature of the Microsoft Windows Winsock 2 Service Provider Interface (SPI). A Layered Service Provider is a DLL that uses Winsock APIs to insert itself into the TCP/IP protocol stack. Once in the stack, a Layered Service Provider can intercept and modify inbound and outbound Internet traffic. It allows processing of all the TCP/IP traffic taking place between the Internet and the applications that are accessing the Internet (such as a web browser, email client or Replay agent.).

This is a common problem in Windows 2003 especially if you use Kaseya agents on these systems. The kaseyasp.dll causes some issues with transferring the file across the network. Luckily this is a really easy fix. Download and run LSPFix.exe on the Windows 2003 Server system. It will find the Kaseya Dll issue and repair it for you.

#4 Verify no Disk Errors are present

This often overlooked but a simple “CHKDSK C:” at the command prompt will scan your disk and verify if there are any errors on your disk. Using the “/F” switch you can fix the errors. Make sure you have clean disks.

By following these steps you should resolve 98% of your common backup issues with Replay clients failing snapshots or not transferring the snapshot once it has been taken.

I hope this helps fellow AppAssure users out there in cybertown.

Enjoy

Cubert 😎

[Solved] Appassure Replay snapshots or base image fails to copy from Agent to Core on or after new installs

So you may have a Windows 2003 server or servers that after installing the agents, configuring permissions and setting system to Protect on your core keeps failing to grab the first snapshot from your system.

This is quite common in Windows 2003 but may see it in 2008 as well. The issue is that the Winsock is messed up. Download and run LSPFix.exe on the client system and restart the agent services afterwards. Then go back to the core and select to force new snapshot to start the download. You should see the system start the download with in 5 minutes and no more errors in events.

I am using Replay version 4.7.2 at the time of this post

Error that may show up when fix is needed:

Logger: tevolib.txtrack
Context: PG=VolsWithInterval60Minutes Volume=\\?\Volume{741d2f02-3eb0-11dd-8e1a-806e6f6e6963}\ DriveLetter=C:
Source Location: TransmissionTracking.cpp:115
Details:
Transmission of volume ‘C:’ started when another transmission of that volume is already in progress

Logger: tevoSource.snapshotHandler
Context: PG=VolsWithInterval60Minutes Volume=\\?\Volume{741d2f02-3eb0-11dd-8e1a-806e6f6e6963}\ DriveLetter=C:
Source Location: SnapshotHandler.cpp:992
Details:
Transfer failed on volume: C: Epoch: 204 Target: CNSCOLO-BDR Port: 8001 – Unspecified error

Logger: exceptions.seh
Context: PG=VolsWithInterval60Minutes
Source Location: exceptions\SehHandler.cpp:151
Details:
Encountered a serious error EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION. Exception dump logged to C:\Documents and Settings\cns\Application Data\AppAssure\ErrorDump-TevoSource.exe-2012-02-28-11-43-41-0625-41.dmp.bz2

Enjoy

Cubert 😎

[Kaseya Scripts] Repair VSS Writers on Windows Servers Agent Procedure

Are you having VSS issues? Need a script to launch when either errors are reported or as a point and shoot script to repair VSS writer issues? Well Cubert has created a new VSS script that is fairly simple in nature but gets the job done nicely. This Kasey Agent Procedure was written for Kaseya 6+ RMM and has 2 parts.

Part 1: Is the VSS-RESET.bat batch file that does the actual work by shutting down the services and re-registering the dlls used by the different VSS Writers. Afterwards it outputs a file to the temp directory with a printout of the VSS writer list cmd.

Part 2: Is the Kaseya Agent procedure that copies the batch file to the system and executes it. It then waits a few minutes for everything to complete and then grabs the report file generated by the batch file and places it on the “GetFile” tab under your [Agent data] menu item inside of LiveConnect.

You can review the report file to see if you are still generating errors after the repairs are preformed.

Download Agent Procedure here -> VSS-RESET

I hope this helps someone out there is Kaseya land!

Cubert.

Kaseya Agent Procedure – FTP Remote Client Backup Script

Backup Windows Systems to a FTP Server

Download: -> Kaseya FTP Backups

So you have Kaseya clients out on the wire that need some level of backup but are not near a NAS or USB Drive. Have thoes clients backup to a FTP server by using WinSCP and a Kaseya Script to do the job for you.

This script has several peices and can be customized for what ever need you have. I currently have the script setup in 3 files.

File #1 (WinSCP_Backup.bat) This is executed by the Kaseya script and passed 2 variables. The variables are the name of the local folder and the name of the remote folder you want to sync.

Example:

c\temp\WinSCP_backup.bat userA FTPdirA >> c\temp\backup.log

We call the BAT file passing “userA” and “FTPDira” this could be the users name for their home directory and the remote directory which could be any folder on your ftp minus the first “/”

File #2 (WinSCP_backup.txt) This file tells WinSCP how to connect to your FTP server and what root directories to start looking in for the folder names provided above. You need to edit this file adding your FTP server information, username and password for FTP if needed.

File #3 is WinSCP.exe, This is a freely available FTP and SCP client for windows that is very configurable and has CLI functions.

This set of scripts in it’s current form will allow you to sync the local systems users home directories to a remote FTP server.

Sync is currently one direction as shown below. But you can sync any way you want.
c:\Documents and Settings\username -> ftp://ftp.domainname.com/foldername

Enjoy

Cubert 😎

Scripts to be used at your own descression, no warranty is implied.