I am getting "Unable to send backup details to server <server name>. An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket." error when running large number of files/Exchange Server/MS SQL Server/other plugin backup jobs. What to do now?

This problem occurs when the socket connection to the backup server is disconnected because of the socket is idle for long time while gathering files information or dumping the Exchange/SQL server databases or running the pre-backup commands. Hence, due to idleness of the socket connection some client/server side NAT/Firewall/Router configuration may close the socket connection. To avoid this situation, Giga Vault Storage sets the Keep Alive option for the sockets. The default time delay to send keep alive notification through the socket is 2 hours in Windows OS.

But, many NAT/Firewall will disconnect the idle socket before sending the keep alive packet within the default 2 hours keep alive time. To avoid this, you can edit the default keep alive time to a smaller value in the Windows registry of the Giga Vault Storage CLIENT system. We suggest you to edit the keep alive value as 60000 (1*60000 i.e., 1 min) value. Please note that all these values are in DECIMAL and you have to select "Decimal' option while editing the following registry entry.

The steps edit the default keep alive time in registry:

1. Open the Registry by running the 'regedit.exe'.

2. Navigate to 'HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters'

3. Edit or Add a DWORD value named 'KeepAliveTime' with value '<The keep alive time value needed in milliseconds>'

4. Close the Registry Editor.

5. Restart the system once to apply the keep alive time configuration

NOTE: Using Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious, system-wide problems that may require you to re-install Windows to correct them. Do not edit the Windows registry unless you are confident about doing so.

Otherwise, you can also configure the application level keep alive time in Giga Vault Storage by changing the following attributes value in the '<Giga Vault Storage_HOME>\conf\SGConfiguration.conf' file.

1. By default, application level Keep alive will be disabled. If you want to enable application level keep alive to prevent connection closure between Giga Vault Storage Client and Backup Server, then you need to set the 'KeepAliveEnabled' attribute value under the <Module> tag to '1'.

   In short manner,

   If 'KeepAliveEnabled' = 0, then application level keep alive is disabled.
   If 'KeepAliveEnabled' = 1, then it is enabled.

2. After enabling the application level keep alive, You need to set 'KeepAliveTime' attribute value under the <Module> tag.

   The 'KeepAliveTime' is the time interval at which the Giga Vault Storage will send the keep alive protocol, if no data is transferred to the Backup Server within the interval. The 'KeepAliveTime' value is based on seconds. We suggest you to edit the 'KeepAliveTime' value as less than 60 seconds(ie 1 minute).

   Similarly, if the socket problem occurs for restore/replication, you can configure the keep alive time for restore/replication by changing the 'KeepAliveEnabled' & 'KeepAliveTime' attribute under the respective <Restore> , <Replication> tag in the '<Giga Vault Storage_HOME>\conf\SGConfiguration.conf' file.