[SIMS] SQL Backup with dbAttach [Solved]

[Rawns]

We have an automated script that runs each night to back up the SIMS and FMS database using the command line parameters of dbAttach.exe.

The same script runs in 250+ schools but with one site, it fails almost every other day with the following error:

Login failed for user 'sa' because the account is currently locked out. The
system administrator can unlock it.

No work has been done to cause the SA password to reset and if you run the script in the morning, it works fine. I can't see anything thats causing the SA password to be locked out as there are no other tasks/jobs running that use it. Any ideas?

[GREED]

So you are not getting any backups? Or are you getting some and not others?

[Rawns]

So you are not getting any backups? Or are you getting some and not others?

Backups are fine in all other schools except this one where we seem to have a successful backup every other day instead of daily. The scheduled backup task runs at 8pm and one night it will work fine, but the next night we wont get a backup at all and the above error is the reason for the failure. Then, if I run the script manually first thing the following day, it works fine again!

[GREED]

Your sure there are no events running at that same time that might affect this? NT backups or anything like that?

I had an issue where the SA account was locked out and I needed to run some SQL code to release it, but this would affect you consistantly.

[matt40k]

Not something silly like SQL is stopped?

[Rawns]

Found the issue. Seems the school are trailing a new online backup solution that runs at the same time as our backup. It has a separate SQL backup feature and they are using the incorrect SA password to back up every database which causes it to be locked out after 3 or 4 attempts. So when our backup task starts, the password is locked. It then gets unlocked overnight meaning I can run a backup as normal.

Thanks for the help guys.