Troubleshooting the Backint agent for SAP HANA

Important: For new installations, instead of using the Cloud Storage Backint agent for SAP HANA, we recommend that you use its successor - Google Cloud's Agent for SAP. From version 3.0, Google Cloud's Agent for SAP combines SAP Host Agent metrics collection with other features such as Backint based backup and recovery for SAP HANA.

If you are using the Backint agent, then we recommend that you switch to using version 3.6 (latest) of Google Cloud's Agent for SAP at your earliest convenience, but before support is discontinued for the Backint agent. For upgrade instructions, see Upgrade to Google Cloud's Agent for SAP from other Google Cloud agents.

Support for the Backint agent ends in February, 2025. This agent is not supported on Compute Engine machine types that became generally available (GA) after February, 2024.

If errors occur during the execution of a backup or a recovery, error messages are displayed in SAP HANA Studio or SAP HANA Cockpit, so check there first for information about the cause of an error. This information might be displayed in the backup.log and backint.log trace files. Be sure to select the relevant database name when multitenant database containers (MDC) are used.

Ensure that you installed the Backint agent as the sidadm user.

Log files

If errors occur, review the following logs:

SAP HANA backup.log, which contains information about the SAP HANA backup and recovery operations.
SAP HANA backint.log, which contains the calls to the backup interface that is used by the Backint agent and other external backup tools.
Backint agent log files, which contain Backint agent installation and operational events. The Backint agent log files are located in /usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/logs. The Backint agent logs can include indications of communication errors with Cloud Storage and related configuration or permissions issues.
The Google Cloud logs, which can contain errors related to the service account that is used by the Backint agent. To review the Google Cloud logs, see the Logs Explorer page in Google Cloud console.

Also check the disk and network I/O information on the SAP HANA host to verify activity.

For more information about Backint agent logging, see Logging for the Backint agent.

Connectivity issues

If the Backint agent can't connect to the Cloud Storage bucket, review the configuration steps. In particular, check the following items:

Retry the failed backup or restore to make sure that the error wasn't just a momentary connectivity issue.
If you are using the service account of the host VM with the Backint agent, the access scope for Storage is listed as Read Write under Cloud API access scopes on the VM instance details page in the Google Cloud console. If it is not, stop the instance and edit the access scope.
If you created a service account for the Backint agent:
- On the Permissions tab of the Bucket details page in the Google Cloud console, confirm that the Backint agent service account is listed and that it has the Storage Object Admin role.
- Confirm that you created a private key, stored it on the SAP HANA host, and correctly specified the path to the JSON key file in the Backint agent configuration file, /usr/sap/SID/SYS/global/hdb/opt/backint/backint-gcs/parameters.txt.
All parameters are specified correctly in both the parameters.txt Backint agent configuration file and the SAP HANA global.ini file.

You can test access to the Cloud Storage bucket from the SAP HANA host by using the Google Cloud CLI. Using the gcloud CLI, save and access a text file on the Cloud Storage bucket:

If you are not using the default service account, authenticate with Google Cloud either as a user that is authorized to the Cloud Storage bucket or the Backint agent service account:
```
gcloud auth login user-account
```
Or:
```
gcloud auth activate-service-account --key-file=/path/key-file-name.json
```
For more information about Cloud Storage authentication of a service account, see gcloud CLI authentication.
Confirm that you can list the objects that are stored in the bucket:
```
gcloud storage ls gs://bucket/
```
Create a test file:
```
touch test.txt
```
Confirm that you can write the test file to the bucket:
```
gcloud storage cp test.txt gs://bucket/test.txt
```
Confirm that you can read the test file in the bucket:
```
gcloud storage cp gs://bucket/test.txt
```

Low throughput

If your throughput is lower than expected, verify that compression is disabled.

To disable compression, add the #DISABLE_COMPRESSION flag to the Backint agent parameters.txt file.

Multistreaming errors

If you get errors while multistreaming, change the number of streams to one (1) to see if the error is related to the number of streams.

For more information about Backint agent logging, see Multistreaming data backups with the Backint agent.