StorageCraft ImageManager multiple errors on processing

I’m running StorageCraft ShadowControl ImageManager on one of my Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials servers as it acts as the host for all my ShadowProtect backups.  Sometime this week, my ImageManager started to log two errors when it did it’s daily processing.

Process folder exception: Unable to synchronize with directory contents

Sync exception: SyncFiles database read error

And in the daily summary report it gave me this error on one of the machines only – all other machines managed by this ImageManager were working just fine.

Unable to summarize activity for I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQWEB1

I did some digging into this and found that someone else has had this issue before.  They found it occurred after an unscheduled restart of their ImageManager server.

I decided to investigate further and found my ImageManager.log file in the “C:\Program Files (x86)\StorageCraft\ImageManager\Logs” path.  In this log I found the following information which correlated to the alert emails I received.

 

Version 5.0.1.13615
07-Mar-2012 20:09:25 Initialized Remoting with secure TCP channel.
tcp://192.168.245.6:56765
07-Mar-2012 20:09:26 Could not find file ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\StorageCraft\ImageManager\ImageManager.lic’.
07-Mar-2012 20:09:35 Watch threads started
07-Mar-2012 20:11:32 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQWEB1

Sync exception: SyncFiles database read error

08-Mar-2012 04:00:00 Queue processing
08-Mar-2012 04:00:00 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQWEB1

Sync exception: SyncFiles database read error

08-Mar-2012 04:00:00 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQWEB1

Process folder exception: Unable to synchronize with directory contents

08-Mar-2012 04:01:11 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQSVR1\F_VOL-b001-i9949-cd.spi
08-Mar-2012 04:02:04 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQSVR1\E_VOL-b001-i9951-cd.spi
08-Mar-2012 04:17:29 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQSVR1\C_VOL-b001-i9949-cd.spi
08-Mar-2012 04:17:52 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\ML350G5\C_VOL-b002-i351-cd.spi
08-Mar-2012 04:20:15 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQNB03\C_VOL-b005-i690-cd.spi
08-Mar-2012 04:20:38 I:\ServerFolders\SPBackups\SBSFAQTSV1\C_VOL-b001-i896-cd.spi

You’ll note above that the log starts at 20:09 on March 7th – it turns out that there was an unscheduled reboot of the server at that time – no idea why but will investigate that separately.  What I need right now is get things working so that SBSFAQWEB1 will be being managed correctly once more.

In ImageManager, the settings for the managed folders are stored within the registry.  The information about the consolidation status, replication status etc. is stored within an access database called ImageManager.mdb and it’s located in the “C:\Program Files (x86)\StorageCraft\ImageManager” folder.  I found elsewhere that someone else had this issue, so thought that it might work for me.  I checked with StorageCraft support here in Australia and Melissa agreed that this was the right course of action to follow.  Here’s what I did.

1. Stop the ShadowControl ImageManager service
2. Delete the ImageManager.mdb
3. Start the ShadowControl ImageManager service once more.

When the service starts, it creates a fresh ImageManager.mdb database and starts the process of reviewing the files present and updating the status of them.  After it’s created the new database, it begins it’s daily processing and verification tasks once again.  Give it 15 minutes or so to process and it was showing green ticks across the board for all my managed folders.

Thanks Mel for confirming the course of action is good.  Glad it worked!