How to quickly disable or enable CA Arcserve & Backup Exec

Ok, I know a thing or two about backups. I’ve been working with them for years using software such as CA Arcserve by Computer Associates and Backup Exec by Symantec (although Backup Exec was originally made by Veritas, since bought out by Symantec).

Anyway, I’ve used Arcserve over the years with mixed results – most of the time it seems to work ok although over the last little while I’ve run into a few problems that have made me question the reliability of the product. The situation hasn’t been helped by CA’s support responses which generally start with the usual stuff i.e. make sure your server is patched, the product is up-to-date and, to my surprise, to re-initialise your Arcserve database. This is something that shouldn’t really be necessary as I wouldn’t expect Arcserve itself to corrupt its own internal database. However, that’s something for another topic altogether.

Due to the problems I’ve had with Arcserve recently, the most serious of which hasn’t been solved yet even with CA’s expert support engineers’ help, I’ve had to switch back to evaluating the latest offering from Symantec/Veritas, Backup Exec 11d.

During this time I was switching back and forth between Arcserve and Backup Exec depending on whether I was diagnosing problems with Arcserve or running tests with Backup Exec. This is frustrating to say the least, especially considering the number of Windows services that have to be stopped then disabled, then re-enabled and started when you switch back to the other product.

Anyway, I wrote 4 quick scripts to accomplish these tasks with minimal effort. These are disableCA.cmd, enableCA.cmd, disableBE.cmd and enableBE.cmd. Simple names for simple tasks really. The contents of each script is below – please feel free to use, copy and modify these scripts any way you want. Alternatively you can click the following link for a ZIP file containing all 4 scripts. Because of their simplicity there is no need to ask for credit but please drop me a note or comment if you use these scripts yourself.

disableCA.cmd

@echo off
sc config "OpenFileAgent" start= disabled
sc config "CASDBEngine" start= disabled
sc config "CASDiscoverySVC" start= disabled
sc config "CASUnivDomainSvr" start= disabled
sc config "CASJobEngine" start= disabled
sc config "CASMsgEngine" start= disabled
sc config "CASSvcControlSvr" start= disabled
sc config "CASTapeEngine" start= disabled
net stop "OpenFileAgent" /y
net stop "CASDBEngine" /y
net stop "CASDiscoverySVC" /y
net stop "CASUnivDomainSvr" /y
net stop "CASJobEngine" /y
net stop "CASMsgEngine" /y
net stop "CASSvcControlSvr" /y
net stop "CASTapeEngine" /y

enableCA.cmd

@echo off
sc config "OpenFileAgent" start= auto
sc config "CASDBEngine" start= auto
sc config "CASDiscoverySVC" start= auto
sc config "CASUnivDomainSvr" start= auto
sc config "CASJobEngine" start= auto
sc config "CASMsgEngine" start= auto
sc config "CASSvcControlSvr" start= auto
sc config "CASTapeEngine" start= auto
net start "OpenFileAgent"
net start "CASDBEngine"
net start "CASDiscoverySVC"
net start "CASUnivDomainSvr"
net start "CASJobEngine"
net start "CASMsgEngine"
net start "CASSvcControlSvr"
net start "CASTapeEngine"

disableBE.cmd

@echo off
sc config "BackupExecAgentBrowser" start= disabled
sc config "BackupExecDeviceMediaService" start= disabled
sc config "BackupExecJobEngine" start= disabled
sc config "BackupExecAgentAccelerator" start= disabled
sc config "BackupExecRPCService" start= disabled
net stop BackupExecDeviceMediaService /y
net stop BackupExecRPCService /y
net stop BackupExecAgentAccelerator /y
net stop BackupExecAgentBrowser /y
net stop BackupExecJobEngine /y

enableBE.cmd

@echo off
sc config "BackupExecAgentBrowser" start= auto
sc config "BackupExecDeviceMediaService" start= auto
sc config "BackupExecJobEngine" start= auto
sc config "BackupExecAgentAccelerator" start= auto
sc config "BackupExecRPCService" start= auto
net start BackupExecDeviceMediaService
net start BackupExecRPCService
net start BackupExecAgentAccelerator
net start BackupExecAgentBrowser
net start BackupExecJobEngine

3 Responses to “How to quickly disable or enable CA Arcserve & Backup Exec”

1. Willy says:

   July 12, 2007 at 11:33

   Hi, and thanks for your Notes. Here is my problem :
   Last night one of our server that connects to one of our customers went down, it is Windows NT Server PC, I look at the Event viewer and this is what I found :
   The description for Event ID (0) in Source (CASDiscoverySvc) could not be found. It contains the following insertion string(s):
   CASDiscoverySvc (EC=1063), StartServiceCtrlDispacher failed

   Also before all this happen, it was a power outage and the PC got resarted and it was waiting on the Ctrl + Alt + Delt to log on to our LAN

   Any input will really appreciate.

   Regards,
   Willy

   Reply
2. Robert says:

   November 1, 2007 at 03:42

   Thanks for that. I had a related problem, but needed to disable a different service. The sc command is very handy. Basically there is a problem with Backup Exec 10 and earlier backing up servers running Windows SharePoint Services. The culprit is the SPSearch service. I therefore got 2 scripts to run – one to stop and disable the service and one to re-enable and start the service.

   I schedule this to run just before backup:
   net stop SPSearch
   sc config “SPSearch” start= disabled

   This one to run just after backup:
   sc config “SPSearch” start= auto
   net start SPSearch

   Unless the service is disabled, the SPTimer service will re-enable it every 5 minutes.

   Reply
3. Peter says:

   June 18, 2010 at 07:20

   These are great – thanks for making them available!

   Reply