MARS Agent Error: The operation failed because of a protection agent failure. Retry the operation. (0x08752)

laughey 21

Our environment consists of six Windows Servers:

2 - v2016

2 - v2019

2 - v2022

All running latest version of MARS agent (installed and configured the same). All patched/updated to current. All running the same AV agent/policy.

One of the Server 2022 devices experiences a "The operation failed because of a protection agent failure. Retry the operation. (0x08752)" error on its first attempt against the C partition. The backup kicks off 1800 ET daily and fails at approximately 1803 ET. The job attempts a 2nd time (automatically) and succeeds.

I've confirmed the status of the scratch folder; no problems. I've confirmed the AV agent is excluding MARS (using https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/azure-docs/blob/main/articles/backup/backup-azure-manage-mars.md).

What else could be causing this?

Source ID: xxxxxxxx.domain.tld

Source type: FileFolder

Category: Jobs

First level container ID: xxxxxxxx.domain.tld

Alert version number: V2020_10

Job ID: 7777777-4444-4444-4444-121212121212

Occurrence count: 1

Recommended actions: Retry the operation.

Affected items: C:\

Description: The operation failed because of a protection agent failure.

Target resource type: microsoft.recoveryservices/vaults

Signal type: Log

Alert ID: 382ad24d-3901-bfa5-cdbe-4f93efe00004

Alert rule: -NA-

Suppression status: None

SadiqhAhmed-MSFT 37,846 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-04-18T14:58:14.38+00:00
@laughey Thank you for reaching out to us on Microsoft Q&A platform. Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you!

The error message "The operation failed because of a protection agent failure" indicates that there was an issue with the Azure Backup agent on the affected Server 2022 device. Since the backup job succeeds on the second attempt, it is possible that the issue is related to the initial connection between the Azure Backup agent and the Azure Backup service.

To troubleshoot this issue, you can try the following steps:

Check the Azure Backup agent logs on the affected Server 2022 device to see if there are any errors or warnings related to the backup job. The logs can be found in the following location: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent\Temp\WABackup_[backup job ID].log

Check the network connectivity between the affected Server 2022 device and the Azure Backup service. Make sure that there are no firewalls or other network devices blocking the connection.

Try restarting the Azure Backup agent service on the affected Server 2022 device to see if that resolves the issue.

Hope this helps!
laughey 21 Reputation points

2024-04-22T12:11:02.6033333+00:00

@SadiqhAhmed-MSFT I checked the log file location but do not see anything with that naming convention. I see numerous CBEngine[number].errlog and LastBackupFailedFiles[123456][date].txt files. I've reviewed some of them, but nothing stands out in terms of potential cause. Connectivity between the server and the Azure Backup service appears fine. Moreover, none of the other systems are experiencing this issue. We restart all servers at specific times (planned outages), the most recent being the day before I posted this question.
SadiqhAhmed-MSFT 37,846 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-04-22T20:36:10.5866667+00:00

@laughey That's strange!

If you are keen to know the cause for first attempt failure, I suggest you contact Azure technical support team by raising a support ticket. The ticket enables you to work closely with the support engineers and get a quick resolution to your issue.

Here is the link - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-portal/supportability/how-to-create-azure-support-request to create support case.