Sharepoint backup fails with "STSADM failed" (79258)

Date: Jan 2009
Product & Version: NVBU 8.x
OS Version: Windows
Module & Version: Sharepoint APM Any
Application version:Sharepoint


Symptoms:
When running a Sharepoint backup, the backup fails with:
Error 2009/01/23 17:11:53 36 Data Plugin SHAREPOINT2003 STSADM failed
Error 2009/01/23 17:11:53 36 Data Plugin SHAREPOINT2003 Error running STSADM

On filtering the log for ALL and looking at the information messages we can see:

Information 2009/01/23 17:10:42 36 Data Plugin SHAREPOINT2003 Error: Object SharePoint_Config failed in event OnBackup. For more information, see the error log located in the backup directory....
Information 2009/01/23 17:10:42 36 Data Plugin SHAREPOINT2003 SqlException: Cannot open backup device 'c:\temp\nvspbackup\spbr0001\00000001.bak'. Operating system error 3(error not found)....

These errors are also listed in the STSADM log (located in the specified temp directory as nvspbackup\spbrXXXX\spbackup.log)


Cause:
The underlying issue here is that the SQL server used by Sharepoint does not have access to the temp directory specified in the Sharepoint APM configuration.

1) ensure that you have correct temporary location defined in the Sharepoint plugin configuration. Note that for a farm this has to be a share with a UNC path (\\servername\share_name), for a single server install, it can be a local directory.

2) Set the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) Windows service to run as a domain account. This will require a restart of the service and IIS.

3) Setup sharing on the temp folder and grant 'change' and 'read' right access to the following users:
a) Windows SharePoint Services Administration service owner
b) SQL Server database service owner
c) Windows SharePoint Services Timer service owner.

5) On each of the SharePoint servers check you can access the share.

6) On each of the SQL Database servers check you can access the share.

7) Set the folder security: grant the privileges "all rights" apart from "Full Control" for the following users:
a) Windows SharePoint Services Administration service owner
b) SQL Server database service owner
c) Windows SharePoint Services Timer service owner.


Explanation
When running a Sharepoint backup, a full copy of the local files on the Sharepoint server is taken (web content etc), after this -a dump of the SQL server databases involved is also made. For this part of the backup to work, the SQL server service has to have the correct access to the temporary area.

In order to confirm that the access is the problem rather than the Netvault configuration, it is possible to run a command line "catastrophic" backup :
stsadm -o backup -directory \\uncpath\path -backupmethod full

This will fail in the same manner as the Netvault backup.

Note that if the SQL server service access is the problem, then running a site collection backup will NOT fail , as it is not dumping the SQL server databases:
stsadm -o backup -url http://mysharepointserver.com -filename mysharepointfile.dat

When the "–url" parameter is used, a backup of the site collection is created. However when the "–backupmethod" parameter is used, a backup of an individual database, Web application, or the entire farm can be created. If you want to overwrite an existing backup file for a site collection only, use the -overwrite parameter.