Or  would it be possible to, maybe turn off reference checkoption in Back Exec window?

Reference check feature, is introduced for maintaining consistency of SQL Agent backups. There is no way to disable it. This takes into account only full, log and differential backup. So, if a copy only backup is done outside backup exec, that is not treated as a reference and hence check is ignored. So, your backups would be successful, if you run copy only backup outside Backup Exec SQL Agent. But, if you run any other type of backup like full, incremental or diffferential outside BE SQL Agent, backup exec job would fail.

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Hello Hemant, Thanks for your reply....

All my databases are running on SQL Server 2005 or 2000. The reason my differentials would fail is because I had "Backup Database Maintenance" window turned on SQL Server 2005 and 2000. I had to have this and by doing this I assured another way of having backups for the databases (.bak files), in the event of potential backup tape corruption, or whatever the reason may be. Once I turned this feature off, Differentials no longer failed.

I'm not sure that I fully understand you....You mentioned that...

Quote; So, if a copy only backup is done outside backup exec, that is not treated as a reference and hence check is ignored.So, your backups would be successful, if you run copy only backup outside Backup Exec SQL Agent.

By what you say is valid, wouldn't I be able to run the backup maintenance window on sql server because the backup is done outside of backup exec sql agent ?

Thanks for your help

The backup done in maintenance window is not a copy only backup, it is normal full backup. Hence, it is also treated as a full backup outside SQL Agent, and hence the job fails. This is true only for BEDB database of Backup Exec. So, you really do not need to be concerened much about this. You would rather not select BEDB database in your SQL Agent backup selections, as we do the backup of our database any ways during maintenance. What you can do is, backup c:\ of your media server which contains the database backup file, bedb.bak. Hence, you effectively have multiple full backups of bedb database. So, basically not recommended using SQL Agent for backing up BEDB database. Apart from that on any other database, reference check is not done if you do a copy only backup outside BE SQL Agent. For, all other types of backup reference check is done, and the backup would fail, if any other application does backup for you.

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I don't have the BEDB selected. All my sql jobs, are run without selecting BEDB.

That should be fine then. I hope that answered your question.

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What I'm trying to point out Hemant, is that, even without having the BEDB selected, differentials will fail, because if I run SQL Server backup maintenance window on the SQL Server, this will erase the reference check point created from the last full database backup job, using symantec backup exec. And none of my jobs don't have BEDB selected. See example below for better understanding...

EXAMPLE:

Sunday  -  -  Full Database Job (Backup Exec)
Monday  -  -  Internal SQL Server (maintenance window, backs-up .mdf and .ldf files to .bak files)
Monday  -  -  Differential Database Job (Backup Exec) ---> This fails because it erases the reference point from the last full backup and the cause is the internal sql server backups and not the BEDB. How do I know this?...I ran a test, once i turned off the internal sql server maintenance window, differentials finished the jobs successfully.

Yes, that is the expected behaviour after installing hotfix 38. There is no way we can change it. As soon as Backup Exec encounters a full backup job done by any other software, it will fail the differential or log backup and the fix is to run a full backup using Backup Exec. In order to change this behaviour, you either need to stop performing backups outside SQL Agent, i.e. during your maintenance plan in SQL or you need to do copy only backup instead of full backup in the maintenance plan. It is always recommended to use single solution for backups. Ideally, i would remove backup from the maintenance plan, as that is not doing any good, if you are using Backup Exec as a primary backup solution.

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