Unable to initialize remote agent - Performing standard backup.

[Zoe123]

I am trying to backup Exchange 5.5 (NT4 platform), the exchange egent and remote agent are both configured. I have other servers which have remote agents on them and they backup fine.

Any ideas would be gratefully recieved.

 

[Guest_imported]

I am having the same problem. I think I might know my cause if someone knows a solution. I un-installed Veritas Backup Exec 8.6 from the Exchange server (NT4, Exchange 5.5) and installed a remote agent on there to back it up from the new centralized backup server. Is this causing my problems? I get the same "Unable to initialize remote agent - Performing standard backup" error on C$ and D$ (exchange information store and directory backups seem to run fine, even though I get that error... Exchange agent is on the backup server). I've tried changing the registry value of AddedToRNR to 0 and restarting the service. no luck. Thanks in advance...

 

[Guest_imported]

Oops... Actually the message I get is "Remote Agent for Windows NT/2000 not present - performing standard backup"

 

[therealkman]

I have a similar problem. I have tried setting the remote agent priority setting to the lowest setting allow only to have the same problem. Is there a known fix?

Thanks

 

[Qdog]

To backup Exchange 5.5 you make sure that:
Backup Exec service account that backup exec services are running on is in domain admins group AND included in the Administrators group locally on the Exchange server. You have delegated control within Exchange to the backup exec services account for Full Administrator. You are logged on from the Backup Exec media server as the Backup Exec service account. You have the Exchange Agent installed on the media server. You have Exchange Administrator installed on the media server. For mailbox backups you have to have a uniquely named mailbox setup for the backup exec service account on the Exchange server AND a mapi mail client, preferably Outlook (but not Outlook XP, it doesn't work, and not Outlook Express, cause its 16bit). Check your mapi32.dll on the Backup media server, if it is the 800k one, it is the server version, need the client version which is a around 100k. The edbbcli.dll on the media server and the one on the Exchange server have to be the same version. Can you see your Exchange server in Exchange Administrator from the media server? 9 times out of 10 this is a permissions issue. Don't forget the remote agent must be running on the remote exchange server.

 

[Guest_imported]

Exact same problem here, except my server is a W2K member server running E2K. Backup of files works fine, backup of Exchange works fine (with error messages however), but anything that depends on the agent fails, like System State. I too have tried just about everything to get this to work, including the fix mentioned earlier (registry change AddedToRNR) My service account has Domain admin and Exchange Full admin rights, so its not a rights issue. You can see the server in the Backup Exec selections window, and when you look at the properties it says the agent is installed and running (version 8.60.3878.0) This failure has nothing to do with Exchange, it has to do with Backup Exec. This error occurs with any type of backup of the remote server - System State, Exchange or File.

I'm starting to get a little PO'd with this problem, and the lack of information on the Veritas site to deal with it. It is very likely a problem with the product, or they are leaving out some critical information on how to set this up. I have followed the instructions to a 'T' and I'm sure the other folks on this thread have also done so.

Does anyone have a service contract with these people? Perhaps get a call going?

D

 

[mkenny]

I would suggest getting a service contract. Mine costabout $450 for unlimited year of support with lots of agents and options. For your issue I have a question are you sure you have matching agents per version. In other words does your Backup Server have build 3878 and your remote agent on your exchange server has 3878 or 3808. if they do not match reinstall on remote machine.

 

[4fili]

I have the same problem where I have a DB and OFO. I think is a problem of mininum quiescient time in OFO settings. Try to set the minum quiescient time a 3 secs.
In some cases it work

Bye franz

 

[Guest_imported]

Fixed my problem - found a thread on the veritas site about the same issue - There is a problem with their software if you have a reference to Appletalk in the Winsock transports in the registry. This may be there even if you don't have appletalk installed - but is more common on an upgraded server.

Really dumb reason, I blame poor programming.

DF

 

[Rols]

fradnik

Thanks for your posts on this topic - I spent 2 hours on the phone to veritas trying to fix this very problem. As soon as I deleted the releveant registry entry the agent started working fine.

Cheers

 

[kaoboda]

Fradnik or Rols,

I am very interested in knowing what you did to fix this? Like which registry keys you edited/deleted and a link to the document you found on the problem.

 

[FunkyUnky]

Hi all,

This could be a RestrictAnonymous problem - if RestrictAnonymous is enabled on the media server itself (as it should be!) then BE 8.6 has to be enabled to support RestrictAnonymous as the default is no support.

Stop the BE services, then go: HKLM\Software\VERITAS\Backup Exec\Engine\NTFS and double click RestrictAnonymous Support.
Then change the value from 0 to 1. Then start the services and try running the backup job again.

Cheers,

F.

 

[SystemsEngineer]

This helps.
We backed up a Virtuell Cluster Node and got this error message. But we did'nt get the Error message when we backed up the physical Node.
Since we set the RestrictAnonymous Support to 1 on the Media Server, we did'n get any further error messages while backing up the virtuell cluster node.
Funky Unky your the real Mr. BackupExec.

 

[dogmata]

Remote agent not present
------------------------

If using OFO for the remote backup, you might want to change the GRFS timeout to 1200 (dec), SendTimeout and ReceiveTimeout to 3600 (dec). OFO can take a while to initialise ie. if there is a lot of disk activity, and will only timeout after 2000 secs, the remote agent will timeout earlier.

You will find the values in the registry on the media server:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VERITAS\Backup Exec\Engine\Agents\....

 

[Rols]

Kaboda - here is the email i sent to the rest of my engineers regarding the problem.

A good tech note to read -

http://seer.support.veritas.com/docs/233459.htm

But also be aware that if the AppleTalk registry entry exists on the media server the remote agent will not function correctly and you will receive the generic "Remote agent not present - performing standard backup" in the job log. The Appletalk protocol does NOT necessarily have to be installed for this registry entry to exist.

Related forum thread -

http://www.tek-tips.com/gviewthread.cfm/lev2/7/lev3/49/pid/481/qid/280835

Remember the registry thread -
\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\WinSock\Parameters\Transports

Hope this helps.

 

[PBurcin]

Our backup server has experienced all of the above. Several things were tried before we were able to eliminate the problem of "agent not present". First was a registry hack from Veritas that was implemented on both the backup server and the offending remote server. The registry change basically reset the Agent Accelerator to a state that forced it to re-register the remote agents. That did not work. Next we tried another registry hack that increased the wait time while OFO enumerated the remote server's drives. That did not work either. Finally, after noting a DCOM error in the remote server's event log, we found a Veritas article that hit the problem on the head. See TechNotID 237444. We defrag'd the hard drives on the remote server. The backups have been running without errors since then.