SIMS Failing

[finney_83]

Hi,

 

Over the last three days, users have been unable to login to SIMS (reason 0 error message). To resolve this issue I have just been restarting the server. Today I have noticed that the SQL Server (SIMS 2010) service had stopped. After starting it up again, this then allowed users to login.

 

This service seems to keep stopping everynight. Also, the C Drive is only 8GB and there is around 900mb of free space left. Is this normal?

 

I have contacted Capita and their solution was to restart the service, but clearly the servuce will more than likely stop again tonight.

 

Has anyone ever experienced this before?

[featured_spectre]

We had this today, I was told to restart the service also, but it got stuck on "stopping service" (was like that for half hour) so in the end I restarted the server and all seems fine now.

[BatchFile]

Simple things first, do you run a backup overnight that stops the service to get at the LDF and MDF files?

[finney_83]

I've had to restart this service every morning for the last three days now. Bad time for it to be failing as well as everyone is doing reports.

[finney_83]

Simple things first, do you run a backup overnight that stops the service to get at the LDF and MDF files?

 

NTBackup is run every night.

[finney_83]

Within the properties of the failing service, I have set the recovery option to 'Restart the server' if it fails.

[Mcshammer_dj]

is Ntbackup scripted and if so what is the script. In the scheduled tasks is there an action to stop the srever

[BatchFile]

Question is, is the service crashing out or being stopped properly by something? Is it happening at the same time each day (see the system logs) ? if it's being stopped properly eg. by a "net stop", the restart option will have no effect.

 

Pragmatically, you could just make a batch file containing

 net start mssql$sims2008 

(replacing mssql$sims2008 with whatever your SQL instance is called if necessary) and make a scheduled task to make it run at 7.30 each morning

[finney_83]

is Ntbackup scripted and if so what is the script. In the scheduled tasks is there an action to stop the srever

 

It isn't me that usualy does the backups but after having a quick look, it is scheduled through BackupAssist. I am unsure of if this service is meant to stop or not during the backup process.

[BatchFile]

I am unsure of if this service is meant to stop or not during the backup process.

 

I don't think you can copy the sims.ldf and sims.mdf if you don't? I've certainly always stopped the service first.

[finney_83]

I don't think you can copy the sims.ldf and sims.mdf if you don't? I've certainly always stopped the service first.

 

The service must be being stopped then when the backup is running, but once the backups have finished, it doesn't seem to be starting up again.

[Mcshammer_dj]

why not use the dbattach with switches to backup the sims database?

 

dbattach /backup /server=servernamehere\instancename /database=sims /user=????0 /password=??????? /auto

 

This will create a backup in the backup folder os SQl

 

If space is an isseu you can then use the tidybackup routine that Matt created and posted here on edugeeks a while ago

[BatchFile]

The service must be being stopped then when the backup is running, but once the backups have finished, it doesn't seem to be starting up again.

 

Then you would seem to need to either edit the backup procedure if you can (not familiar with backupassist I'm afraid), or create the batch file I mentioned up there /|\ and schedule it. If it's definately the backup that's stopping it and nothing more sinister, it's a safe permanent fix.

[finney_83]

After having another look at the backups, I think I know what is causing the problem. I will know for sure tomorrow what it is, and I will update this thread.

[vikpaw]

An 8GB C drive is very small, especially if your mdf and ldf are stored there, which is the default i think. Plus your docstorage would be there too, so you're looking at running out of space fast. Only 900MB free is pretty tight, and any process that needs to make a temporary file is going to clobber the machine. For example, making a backup of the database, and perhaps zipping it as some routines do will require making a temporary file the same size as the db! My daily SIMS backup is 3GB, until i zip it to 1GB, but if i don't have much spare room, it wont work. Doesn't stop the service, but it's not good for the system.

 

Whatever the actual fault turns out to be, you need to take some drastic measures to make some room and expand the capacity somewhat.