Backup Exec inadvertently deletes User profile and Application data files from the Backup Exec media server.

Severity

Critical

Description

Backup Exec may inadvertently delete User profile and Application data files from the Backup Exec media server on certain rare occasions where backup sets on disk contain active mount points and the Data Life Cycle Management (DLM) process attempts to reclaim storage space for that backup set through manual expiry or scheduled expiry.

This issue is seen under the following conditions:

1. User initiates a Granular Recovery Technology (GRT) restore for a virtual machine backup residing on disk storage. The backup was done using the Instant GRT feature.

2. The temporary mount point created for the GRT restore browse is not cleaned up from within the IMG folder.

3. While the temporary mount point folder is present, there is an attempt to expire that same backup set (through scheduled DLM process or manual expire in UI) .

Note: Backup Exec does periodically clean up these unused active mount points every 60 minutes and so the window where this issue can occur is further minimized.

Cause:

Certain Backup Exec operations such as a restore browse view of a GRT enabled backup set fails to dismount the virtual mount point created for this purpose. When the backup set is expired either manually or scheduled, the DLM process attempts to clean up an actively mounted backup set resulting in traversing and deleting any reparse points that may point back to the Backup Exec Server system.

Affected Versions

Backup Exec 22
Backup Exec 21.x (All Versions)
Backup Exec 20.x (All Versions)
 

Action Required

The formal resolution for this issue is included in the following version(s)
 

• Backup Exec 22.1
• Backup Exec 21.4 Hotfix 279458
• Backup Exec 20.x installations must upgrade to Backup Exec 22.1 or Backup Exec 21.4 with  Hotfix 279458.