VDI error 1010 due to an abort request

Category: Troubleshooting & error messages
Date: 14 Jul 2009
Product: SQL Backup
Version: 4-6

When backing up a database, the following error may occur:

VDI error 1010: Failed to get configuration from server. Check that the SQL Server instance is running, and that you have the SQL Server Systems Administrator server role. Error code: (-2139684860: An abort request is preventing anything except termination actions.)

Use the MAXTRANSFERSIZE option to resolve this problem, as this error is caused by an insufficient amount of contiguous memory. Your server may have 2MB of free memory but SQL Backup requires a continuous block of free memory, as per the following explanantion:

"When SQL Backup encounters VDI errors 1000, 1010, 1020, 1030 or 1040, SQL Backup attempts the backup again reducing automatically the MAXTRANSFERSIZE parameter in case the error was caused by an insufficient amount of continuous memory on the SQL server. SQL Backup attempts the backup 5 times in total using the MAXTRANSFERSIZE values of 1048576, 524288, 262144, 131072 and 65536 respectively.

SQL Server specifies an amount of virtual address space (in megabytes, default value is 128MB) that SQL Server will leave available for memory allocations within the SQL Server process but outside the SQL server memory pool. This area is used by SQL Server for loading extended procedure .dll files, such as xp_sqlbackup.dll used by SQL Backup. It is in this area of memory that SQL Backup creates the VDI device for use when running a backup task. On average SQL Backup requires approximately 6MB of continuous memory but this varies dependant on the size of your database.

If you wish to stop this warning from occurring, either modify your existing jobs and specify a MAXTRANSFERSIZE value or configure new jobs using the command line or Extended Stored Procedure and specify a MAXTRANSFERSIZE value.

If this situation arises, the corresponding SQL Backup log file will be similar to the following:

VDI error 1010: Failed to get configuration from server. Check that the SQL Server instance is running, and that you have the SQL Server Systems Administrator server role. Error code: (-2139684860: An abort request is preventing anything except termination actions.)
13/08/2007 15:42:50: SQL error 3013: BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.
13/08/2007 15:42:50:
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Memory profile
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Type Maximum Minimum Average Blk count Total
13/08/2007 15:42:50: ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Commit 1727135744 4096 2633044 1558 4102283264
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Reserve 15728640 4096 347612 307 106717184
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Free 2322432 4096 310113 277 85901312
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Private 1727135744 4096 3290718 1261 4149596160
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Mapped 1585152 4096 183755 58 10657792
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Image 7569408 4096 89279 546 48746496
13/08/2007 15:42:50:
13/08/2007 15:42:50: Warning 300: Backup failed. Retry attempt: 1

For in-depth information concerning SQL Server memory configuration as it applies to SQL Backup, please see http://www.red-gate.com/support/kb/KB200708000142.htm