PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance 5.15.0.0 File System User Guide

PowerProtect agent service fails to start on Windows

After the application agent is installed, the PowerProtect agent service might fail to start on the Windows operating system.

Check for the following timeout error messages in the event viewer logs:

A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the PowerProtect Agent Service service to connect.
The PowerProtect Agent Service service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

If these error messages appear in the event viewer logs, apply the following workaround:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-in/help/922918/a-service-does-not-start-and-events-7000-and-7011-are-logged-in-window

Agent registration

On Windows, if the agent fails to establish a connection with the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance server, agent registration might fail with the following error message:

During a network connectivity test, the agent is unable to reach the PowerProtect Data Manager server by using ping. 

1.	If the ping command is blocked in the environment, the agent registration can still complete successfully. 
Review the agent service logs at INSTALL_DIR\DPSAPPS\AgentService\logs to verify that the registration is successful. If the registration is successful, the status of the agent host indicates Registered in the PowerProtect Data Manager UI.
2.	If the ping command is not blocked in the environment, the agent registration might not complete successfully because a network connection cannot be started. If this occurs, complete the following steps to troubleshoot the issue:

On Linux or AIX, if the agent fails to establish a connection with the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance server, agent registration might fail with the following error message:

During a network connectivity test, the agent is unable to reach the PowerProtect Data Manager server by using ping and curl. 

1.	If the ping command is blocked in the environment and curl is not installed, the agent registration can still complete successfully. 
Review the agent service logs at /opt/dpsapps/agentsvc/logs to verify that the registration is successful. If the registration is successful, the status of the agent host indicates Registered in the PowerProtect Data Manager UI.
2.	If the ping command is not blocked in the environment, the agent registration might not complete successfully because a network connection cannot be started. If this occurs, complete the following steps to troubleshoot the issue:

If agent registration fails with these error messages, complete the following operation:

1. Use any network packet tracing tool to trace the packets from the agent system to PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance.
2. Start the packet tracing between the source IP of the agent system and the destination IP of PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance.
3. Start the network traffic between the agent system and PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance.

   Wait 10 to 15 seconds.

4. Analyze the captured packets.
5. Look for SYN and SYN_ACK packets to see if a 3-way handshake is being performed.

   Determine whether the source agent or the destination PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance is blocking the connection.

   If network traffic is blocked, contact your network security team to resolve the port communication issue.

Agent host is registered with short name instead of FQDN

Application agent registration using the short name of the agent host is not supported after updating to PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance 19.11 or later versions.

If the agent host was previously registered with the short name, and you attempt to reregister the host with the short name after updating PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance to version 19.11 or a later version, registration fails with the following error:

Unable to register the agent host <hostName> because short name is not allowed for agent registration.

To resolve the issue, do not remove the host. Configure the host with the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), and then retry the registration.

If you try to register a new host with the short name after updating PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance to version 19.11 or a later version, registration fails with the following error:

Unable to register the agent host <hostName> because short name is not allowed for agent registration.

To resolve this issue, remove the application agent host in the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI:

1. Go to Infrastructure > Application Agents.
2. Select the entry for the application agent host and click Remove.

   After the removal, the host is in a "Deleted" state.

   NOTE:The application agent host is automatically removed from the Application Agents window within 24 hours after the deletion.
3. After the removal process is complete, configure the host with the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), and then retry the registration.

PowerProtect agent service operations

To troubleshoot PowerProtect agent service operations, you can check the PowerProtect agent service log file OpAgentSvc-<timestamp>.log, which is created in <agent_service_installation_location>\logs on Windows and <agent_service_installation_location>/logs on AIX or Linux. To modify the log level and retention of temporary files, you can modify specific parameter settings in the config.yml file.

To modify the log level and retention of temporary files, you can perform the following steps:

1. Stop the agent service.
2. Open the config.yml file in an editor.
3. Modify the log-level settings in the following parameters, as required:
   • DEBUG
   • INFO
   • WARNING
   • ERROR
   • CRITICAL
   NOTE:These parameters are listed in order of decreasing number of messages in the debug information output. The default log-level is INFO.
4. To retain the temporary files, set the keepTempFiles parameter to True in the config.yml file.
   NOTE:The agent service and application agent communicate through the temporary files, which are typically deleted after use but can be useful for troubleshooting purposes. Do not leave the keepTempFiles parameter set to True permanently, or the temporary files can use excessive space on the file system.
5. Start the agent service.

Uninstalling the PowerProtect agent service results in "Segmentation fault(coredump)" error on AIX platforms

After updating the application agent from version 19.12 to 19.13, uninstalling the PowerProtect agent service results in the following error:

/usr/sbin/rpm_share [470]: 19005466 Segmentation fault(coredump)

This behavior does not impact reinstallation of the PowerProtect agent service.

The core dump error is due to a faulty rpm.rte file with version 4.13.0.3. For more information, see update rpm.rte to the latest version to resolve rpm errors and core dumps.

To resolve this issue, either update the rpm.rte file to the latest version or update the AIX Technology Level (TL) version. The following article provides more information about TL versions:

Fileset information for: rpm.rte

Deletion compliance for SLA validation job marked as "Failed" in PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI

Due to a cancel request and create-new-copy deletion request occurring simultaneously, deletion compliance for an SLA validation job is incorrectly shown as "Failed" in the UI, even though the copy deletion has succeeded. This issue can occur if replication copies exist, but the corresponding backup copy has been deleted. In this case, the retention time of the replication copies is greater than the retention time of the backup copy. Once the replication copies expire or are manually deleted, it triggers the catalog deletion request, which marks the copy as "Deleted."

PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI display of localhost.localdomain hostname

In the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI, the Application Agents, Asset Sources, and Protection Jobs windows might list the asset primary hostname as localhost.localdomain instead of the expected FQDN.

The display of localhost.localdomain as the hostname in the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI windows might occur when you specify the host's actual FQDN setting for the loopback address in the /etc/hosts file. For example, when you add the following settings in the /etc/hosts file, the first setting value, localhost.localdomain, appears as the hostname in the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI windows, instead of the actual FQDN:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
127.0.0.1 blrv027d233.blr.lab.dell.com blrv027d233

Ensure that the host's actual FQDN is not specified for the loopback address and do not specify hostnames that start with "local" in the /etc/hosts file.

Asset configuration job is queued when policy configuration job fails to create a storage unit

An asset-level configuration job runs only after the corresponding policy configuration job creates the required storage unit for the protection policy. If the policy configuration job fails to create the storage unit, the asset configuration job is queued, waiting for the storage unit to be created. The asset configuration job remains queued for a maximum of 24 hours and is then canceled automatically.

You can monitor the status of policy configuration jobs and asset configuration jobs in the System Jobs window in the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance UI.

As a workaround, try to restart the failed policy configuration job while the asset configuration job is queued. If the policy configuration job succeeds in creating the required storage unit, the asset configuration job restarts and runs to completion. Otherwise, if the policy configuration job cannot create the storage unit, the asset configuration job is canceled after being queued for 24 hours.

File System agent is also disabled when Microsoft SQL Server application agent is disabled on the same host

When the Microsoft SQL Server application agent and File System agent coexist on the same host, you cannot disable the agents separately. In this case, the host is registered to the same PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance instance. When you disable the Microsoft SQL Server application agent by deleting the asset source, the File System agent is also disabled.

Mount point assets ending with "\" must be manually deleted

In a Windows cluster setup, folder mount point assets ending with "\"(for example, E:\SysBDB\) must to be manually deleted.