We have Exchange 2003 running on a Windows 2003 server. For some reason, the backup job (using NTBackup) usually fails to work by itself. If I right click on the job and run it, it works fine, the files are backed up and the transaction logs for Exchange are removed.
I have verified multiple times that the user the task is scheduled to run as has the appropriate permissions. I've even set it up to run as an administrative account to rule that out. It does not matter if the console is left logged on and locked or if it is logged out, the darn thing simply will not work.
I've created a batch file to try to capture what's going on which writes out to it's own log file and calls the ntbackup.exe with the job parameters. It shows that the process starts and that ntbackup runs returning an exit code of 0 (normally a success) however, nothing is backed up.
Now here's one more oddity. We had to reboot the server a few weeks ago for an update. After that reboot, the task would work as scheduled as long as the console was logged in! Last weekend we unfortunately had a couple of huge thunderstorms, one of which resulted in an extended power outage in which the server had to be shut down. Now it will not work as it should.
I cannot find anything in any log (event log, backup log) that indicates there is a problem. Is there any way to troubleshoot this?
[EDIT]
Here are the parameters requested by Nick
ntbackup.exe backup "<path to the .bks" /n "<path to the .bkf>" /j "Nightly Backup" /v:yes /r:no /rs:no
Best Answer
Are you RDP'ing into the server & leaving sessions open/disconnected? ntbackup wont work if there are users rdp'ed in. console is ok, checkout this MS KB article
MS has no way of fixing this, you can side step the issue by changing the terminal services config to log users off that are idle, that way you minimise the chance of a logged in RDP session when the task kicks off. It's that or buy decent backup software :-)