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The semaphore timeout period has expired while attempting 'FlushFileBuffers'

  • January 18, 2017 at 7:36 am

    #320685

    Hi All,

    I'm having an issue with a SQL maintenance plan during the DB backup step. All of the DBs in my instance are failing due to '"The operating system returned the error '121(The semaphore timeout period has expired.)' while attempting 'FlushFileBuffers' on \\...'

    It's strange because the backup gets to 100 percent processed before the failure e.g:

    90 percent processed.
    Processed 32304 pages for database 'msdb', file 'MSDBData' on file 1.
    100 percent processed.
    Processed 5 pages for database 'msdb', file 'MSDBLog' on file 1.". Possible failure reasons: Problems with the query, "ResultSet" property not set correctly, parameters not set correctly, or connection not established correctly.

    The backup files created do seem to be valid and I have tested restoring one of them into a different SQL instance without issue. The 'last backup' datetime property also gets updated for each database.

    When I run a manual backup to the same location it completes successfully.

    SQL version is 11.0.5058 and I'm backing up to a UNC fileshare path. If it helps, the fileshare is hosted in a SIOS cluster, not sure if that makes any difference.

    Has anyone else experienced this issue and does anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve it?

    Many Thanks,

    Phil

  • January 18, 2017 at 1:22 pm

    #1923541

    You typically get this error when there's an issue communicating with the storage device. What happens when you run a backup using a SQL Server Agent job and not through a maintenance plan?<

    K. Brian Kelley
    @kbriankelley

  • January 20, 2017 at 10:31 am

    #1924106

    K. Brian Kelley - Wednesday, January 18, 2017 1:22 PM

    You typically get this error when there's an issue communicating with the storage device. What happens when you run a backup using a SQL Server Agent job and not through a maintenance plan?<

    Thanks for your thoughts Brian. I haven't actually tried running the backup in a SQL Agent job but what I did check was running the maintenance plan to a local drive and this worked perfectly. So I think I will need to get in touch with our storage vendors to investigate further..

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