Setting thresholds to recover jobs

If the Backup Exec services become unresponsive, that is, when there are problems with jobs being sent to the Backup Exec engine or if it seems that jobs are not running, you can set the threshold at which Backup Exec changes the status of active jobs to stalled. You can also set the threshold at which Backup Exec fails the jobs that were stalled, and then recovers them.

By setting a fewer number of seconds before Backup Exec reaches the threshold for changing a job's status to stalled, you can receive an earlier notification that jobs have stalled. A shorter time between the stalled and recovered thresholds also allows Backup Exec to fail and then recover the stalled jobs earlier. However, setting the thresholds too low may force a job to be recovered when it is not necessary.

Backup Exec recovers the jobs by using the custom error-handling rule named Recovered Jobs. This custom error-handling rule is created and enabled when Backup Exec is installed, and specifies that stalled/failed/recovered jobs are retried two times, with an interval of five minutes between the retries.

See Custom error-handling rule for recovered jobs.

Jobs that are stalled and then failed and recovered by Backup Exec because of unresponsive Backup Exec services are displayed differently in Backup Exec than jobs that fail because of errors in normal daily activities. The stalled/failed/recovered jobs are not indicated in red text in the job history as other failed jobs are. Instead, these jobs are displayed in gray text with a job status of Recovered.

In the job history, the error category is listed as Job Errors. The job history indicates the type of internal communication error that occurred and that the job was recovered. Based on the type of error that occurred, there may or may not be a log file associated with the recovered job.

To set thresholds to recover jobs

  1. On the Tools menu, click Options.

  2. In the Properties pane, under Settings, click Job Status and Recovery.

  3. Change the appropriate fields described in the following table, and then click OK:

    Stalled

    When the Backup Exec job engine service is not responding, enter the number of seconds before the statuses for active jobs are changed to Stalled.

    Recovered

    Enter the number of seconds before jobs are failed and then recovered by Backup Exec. A custom error-handling rule named Recovered Jobs is applied to recovered jobs. If this rule is disabled, then any other error-handling rules that have been enabled will apply to the recovered jobs. If there are no error-handling rules that apply to the job, then the job fails.

More Information

Error-handling rules