Troubleshooting Minion Backup collections in Minion Enterprise Print
Created by: Sean McCown
Modified on: Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 10:23 AM
Problem:
Backup settings aren't importing correctly.
Troubleshooting steps:
1. Make sure that there are entries in dbo.ConnParameters for Collector.MBImportAllLogs and dbo.MBSettingsImport. If not, then copy one of the other columns and change the CollectionName and AppName columns to the correct settings. You’ll need to make sure there is an entry for each of the items above.
2. Check that the SQL Agent account on the ME server has permissions to the management database that has the MB tables.
3. ME has to know where your management database is so it knows where to look for the MB tables. You can have a global management DB inside ME, or you can configure a different one for each client server. It's always best to standardize these things, so having MB installed in the same database on each client server is optimal. However, sometimes you don't have an optimal situation and you may not have the same management DB on every server in your shop. You can have only one global value though; that's what makes it global. Usually in ME, an InstanceID of 0 is a global value. So if you've only got one management DB in your whole shop, then enter that into the dbo.ServerMgmtDB table for InstanceID = 0. Otherwise, the client servers that don't use that global default value can have their own configuration in this table. It's quite easy, you have to have a management DB configured. And if a client server doesn't have its own value in this table, then it'll get its row from the global default row.
To test your management DB configuration for a specific server, run this against the Minion DB:
EXEC Collector.ServerMgmtDBGet 'ServerName'
The MgmtDB in the above call can never be NULL.
4. Run MBSettingsImport.exe from a PowerShell command line. Change to the Collector directory.
>cd C:\MinionByMidnightDBA\Collector
>./MBSettingsImport.exe SLA
Take note of any errors that come across the screen and if you're not able to resolve them yourself, feel free to contact MinionWare support for help.
Problem:
You are unable to push settings changes from ME to an MB client server.
Troubleshooting steps:
1. Check that Push = 1 for the InstanceID you're interested in in the backup settings table you're trying to push. Only one of the rows for an InstanceID needs to be set to Push = 1 for all the rows for that InstanceID to be pushed to the client server. Once the Push job runs, it should change Push in the settings table back to 0. There are several settings tables for MB and you can change them at your leisure. And only the ones you've set to push will be pushed.
2. ME has to know where your management database is so it knows where to look for the MB tables. You can have a global management DB inside ME, or you can configure a different one for each client server. It's always best to standardize these things, so having MB installed in the same database on each client server is optimal. However, sometimes you don't have an optimal situation and you may not have the same management DB on every server in your shop. You can have only one global value though; that's what makes it global. Usually in ME, an InstanceID of 0 is a global value. So if you've only got one management DB in your whole shop, then enter that into the dbo.ServerMgmtDB table for InstanceID = 0. Otherwise, the client servers that don't use that global default value can have their own configuration in this table. It's quite easy, you have to have a management DB configured. And if a client server doesn't have its own value in this table, then it'll get its row from the global default row.
To test your management DB configuration for a specific server, run this against the Minion DB:
EXEC Collector.ServerMgmtDBGet 'ServerName'
The MgmtDB in the above call can never be NULL.
3. Check that the SQL Agent account on the ME server has permissions to the management database that has the MB tables.
4. The MB version may not have been collected during the import process. Each server should have its own row in dbo.DBMaintVersion. So run this query to inspect all of the MB versions for backup in ME.
SELECT * from dbo.DBMaintVersion WHERE Module = 'Backup'
If any of the rows have NULL values, or if there are any servers missing, this could be your problem. At this point, feel free to fill in this data by hand. You can also re-import the data after you fix the issue on the client servers. To fix this issue at the sever, you need to simply re-run the MB setup on each server. The issue is with the HELP tables. ME gets the version info from the HELP tables in MB, so if that info is either incorrect or missing then that will keep ME from knowing what version of MB you're on.
You can check the version on each client server by running this query:
SELECT MAX(MinionVersion) AS MinionVersion FROM [Minion].[HELPObjects] WHERE Module = 'Backup'
5. Check that both the servers can talk to each other. They may be on separate vLANs, or have IPSEC turned on, or any number of issues blocking communication between the ME server and the client server.
6. Run MBPropertyPush.exe from a PowerShell command line. Change to the Collector directory.
>cd C:\MinionByMidnightDBA\Collector
>./MBPropertyPush.exe
Notice that this exe doesn't take SLA as a parameter. This is because when it comes to pushing settings, the SLA doesn't matter. When the new properties are ready to push, it doesn't matter what the SLA is, the data needs to be pushed. So no need to worry about SLA for this operation.
Take note of any errors that come across the screen and if you're not able to resolve them yourself, feel free to contact MinionWare support for help.
Problem:
MB log history isn't being collected into the ME repo.
Troubleshooting steps:
1. Make sure that you've setup the trigger file share location properly. For instructions, see the setup guide here: https://minionware.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/2524151-setting-up-minion-backup-collections-in-minion-enterprise.
2. Make sure that the client servers have permission to write to the trigger file share. They need read/write.
3. Once you've verified that the files are being written to the share, make sure that ME has the location recorded properly for your client servers. The TriggerPath column in dbo.BackupSettings is where this comes from. Run this query to see all the trigger paths you've defined.
EXEC Collector.BackupTriggerPathGet
If this doesn't return anything, then you don't have any trigger paths defined and ME doesn't know where to look for the files. At this point it's possible that maybe you had set this up properly in the past, but someone has changed it since. So maybe the client servers know where the trigger path is, but ME doesn't. You can get the trigger path back into ME by either updating the above table manually, or by re-importing the settings data from the client servers. For instructions, see the setup guide here: https://minionware.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/2524151-setting-up-minion-backup-collections-in-minion-enterprise.
4. Run one of the MBHistory*.exe programs from a PowerShell command line. Change to the Collector directory.
>cd C:\MinionByMidnightDBA\Collector
>./MBHistoryProcessBackupDB.exe
Above is an example call. Before you run it, make sure there are files in the BackupDB folder in the trigger file path. Otherwise there won't be any files to process.
Take note of any errors that come across the screen and if you're not able to resolve them yourself, feel free to contact MinionWare support for help.
Related Articles:
Setting up Minion Backup collections in Minion Enterprise
Understanding the Minion Backup History Collection Process
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