CUCM Backup

[hassanalirazi]

Dear All

I would really appreciate it if someone could help me out with this issue, so thanking you guys in advance. I have two CUCM clusters and both of them generate the same error while taking backup " TAR FILE NOT CREATED" and the backup fails on both the servers.

Can anyone tell me what seems to be the issues? would restarting the DRF MASTER service help me out? if it will what,if any, services that might get effected? As these clusters are being used in a live enviornment.

Thanks

Hassan Ali

[phooghen · Accepted solution]

You can indeed restart Cisco DRF Local and Master on Pub and Sub.

Then you have to make sure your STFP connection is working properly (directory, username, password ...)

You can also try another SFTP application.

From http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/drs/8_0_2/drsag802.html

To back up data to a remote device on the network, you must have an SFTP server that is configured. Cisco allows you to use any SFTP server product but recommends SFTP products that have been certified with Cisco through the Cisco Technology Developer Partner program (CTDP). CTDP partners, such as GlobalSCAPE, certify their products with specified version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager. For information on which vendors have certified their products with your version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager, refer to the following URL:

http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/ctdp/Search.pl

For information on using GlobalSCAPE with supported Cisco Unified Communications versions, refer to the following URL:

http://www.globalscape.com/gsftps/cisco.aspx

Cisco uses the following servers for internal testing. You may use one of the servers, but you must contact the vendor for support:

•Open SSH (refer to http://sshwindows.sourceforge.net/)

•Cygwin (refer to http://www.cygwin.com/)

•Titan (refer to http://www.titanftp.com/)

Cisco does not support using the SFTP product freeFTDP. This is because of the 1GB file size limit on this SFTP product

[hassanalirazi]

Thanks i will try this and will let you know.

Regards

Hassan

[hassanalirazi]

Dear Phooghen

Luckily i had to restart the whole cluster the solve another issue with CUCM but the issue persists. The error is generated while backing up ccmdb" tar file not created"

In another server that is geograpically seperate and connected to the same storage using WAN the same error occurs but it doesnt take backup of any device at all.

I am using freeFtpd and have been using it from the start and it seems to be working well before just now.

Thanks and regards

Hassan Ali

[jehlas]

Hey Hassan,

As the previous poster mentioned "Cisco does not support using the SFTP product freeFTPD. This is because of the 1GB file size limit on this SFTP product". Most likely the DB is going to be larger than 1GB and so freeFTPd is not going to work here.

Open SSH works well, but feel free to also try something else.

Regards,

John

[Richard McLoughlin]

Hi John

Thanks very much for the heads up.

I use free FTPD and wasn't aware of this limitation - probably because my backup sits just under the 1GB mark, but I've had more than one occasion where Free FTPD just stops working until I completely remove and re-install it.

I'll keep a close eye in future.

Best regards

Richard McLoughlin

Network and Telephony Team (IPT Specialist)

University of Pymouth

[Richard McLoughlin]

Hi Hassan

Free FTPD is fine when it works ( and hey - its free!) but a real pig when it doesn't.

I've been here more than one once where Free FTPD just stops working when there hasn't been any config changes made - or none that I'm aware of anyway.

If your DRF is reporting that it is unable to create the TAR file, chances are that the CUCM DRF Master cannot contact the SFTP server.

If you go to the backup device config page in CUCM, don't make any change but just re-save the page - does the update fail or is it successful?

Can the two devices at least ping each other? - I bet they can.

Are the user name, password and path correct in CUCM and are the username and password the same as configured in FTPD. I tend to prefer setting the path to "/" in CUCM as absolute path as relative directory paths have caught me out in the past - If there is an error here, your backup will fail with the error you are currently seeing.

When specifying the backup repository in FTPD, again I tend to specify an absolute path as the Home Directory for the FTPD user, rather than a relative path of the SFTP Root Directory. In fact, mine are currently configured as one and the same. The fact that you say this has worked in the past indicates that you have set it correctly.

If you are specifying a network resources as your repository, do your account credentials (I assuming a Windows box is running FTPD here) have rights to write to this network resource?

If this all checks out then:-

Delete Free FTPD from your work station - I go as far as to remove all references from it the registry as well. Re- install it from scratch, re- enter your backup user details and home directory. This has worked for me on 3 occasions now. Why it suddenly stops working - who knows.

HTH

Richard McLoughlin

Network and Telephony Team (IPT)

University of Plymouth

PS:

One more thing - check that only one server in each cluster is running as DRF Master and that the remainder are DRF slaves. For some reason, after a cluster reboot, my PUB, all of my SUBS and TFTP server are all running as both master and slave which can cause confusion as to what registers with what

[hassanalirazi]

Dear All

I have installed Titan FTP as recommended and will test it tonight i hope this would resolve the issue as for the backup not starting at the cluster located over IPWAN i have discovered the network team has an ACL which block port 22. I will update you guys tommorow on what happened during backup which i have scheduled tonight.

Thanks to all

Regards

Hassan

[hassanalirazi]

Titan FTP works great the problem really was with Ftpd and the other issue was related to Port 22 being blocked.

Thanks

Hassan

[Richard McLoughlin]

Excellent news Hassan. Pleased that you got it sorted. Following the recommendations from this thread, I will also have a look at Titan and other solutions myself.

Best regards

Richard